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As captivating as the 2022 World Cup in Qatar has been, there has been
a temptation to turn away from the action owing to the sheer anguish you
feel if you're a Leeds United fan. The root cause of this trauma has been
brought on by watching once unknown players who the Whites were close
to signing, now shine on the biggest stage of them all. Put another way,
the opportunity to sign some of the best talents in the game has come
and gone for Leeds now the secret of their ability is common knowledge
around the globe. Incredibly, you just need to look through the names of the top contenders
in the latest World
Cup Golden Boot betting odds to find what was, for all intents and
purposes, a list of Leeds' summer transfer targets. Naturally, there are
a few exceptions such as Lionel Messi who is one of the favourites to
win the Golden Boot at odds of 12/1, but there are a couple of names on
this list with competitive prices that Leeds' director of football Victor
Orta came agonizingly close to signing. Thank you Australia for a great two weeks. The
team is working tirelessly every day to improve and grow. Big things
on the horizon! #LUFC
#MOT
pic.twitter.com/lJK6nk5P3e Leeds had, after all, been quite open about who they were after during
the 2022 summer transfer window which, obviously, is a strategy that comes
with its own set of positives and negatives. On the one hand, the upside
is that it whips up excitement in the fanbase during the pursuit of any
player whilst on the other, the disadvantage is that if the club isn't
able to land their target, the powers that be are not always afforded
the benefit of the doubt by supporters when it comes to why. In Leeds' case, the reality is that they have a complicated past when
it comes to missing out on players. Admittedly, Orta and his staff are
not always to blame as was the case when Leeds became the unwitting victims
of boardroom politics at Swansea City which saw them lose out on
the signing of Dan James at the eleventh hour in 2019. To their credit,
the club did eventually land their man two seasons later but the entire
episode made Leeds fans skeptical of the club's ability to get deals over
the line, irrespective of who was to blame. The last time Dan James was seen with an @LUFC
shirt... Fast forward to 2022 and as touched on, some of the best performing players
at
the World Cup in Qatar were Leeds signings all but in name only for
the deal to collapse late on. Again, some of the circumstances that led
to players not officially putting pen to paper were out of Leeds' control,
such as the time when Netherlands coach Louis van Gaal became involved
when one of his national team players (Cody Gakpo) was on the verge of
joining the Whites. On this occasion, Van Gaal urged the player Leeds
wanted not to sign given that it was a World Cup year and they needed
to play as much as possible in the build-up to the event in Qatar. It
should be said that there was no suggestion that the player in question
was ever going to sit on the bench at Leeds but given that he was a regular
starter for his club in the Eredivisie, Van Gaal's advice was that he
would have time to make a name for himself in the Middle East and didn't
need to rush into any decisions six months before the tournament began. Victor Orta is in the headlines again so I wrote
about him again. Fast forward to the end of 2022 and the 71-year-old appears to have been
right but it has come at the cost of one of the world's best-emerging
talents not signing for Leeds. Questions will be surely asked if Leeds
could have done more in order to be successful in their pursuit but following
yet another failed attempt to capture the signature of a player they wanted,
the pressure will now be ramped up on the club's management over the winter
transfer market.
A summer of what could have been
An indifferent record
Finally, they have their man ?? pic.twitter.com/5w9ey4UljD
The debate about him always seems to be 'brilliant or failure' - but
actually, there's a huge spectrum in between.
And in any case, the bigger picture at Leeds is the ownership structure:https://t.co/pvh7XpVH0K