Ian Poveda seemed to be slipping away from Leeds earlier this week as reports circulated that the 19-year-old had been spotted in Italy with his agent.

Phil Hay confirmed that there was interest from Italian clubs, but it seems as though the deal could be back on track. Recently it was claimed by Tuttosport (via SportWitness) that Marcelo Bielsa personally phoned the winger to win him over.

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It’s always going to be a winning hand when you can get a man who was once hailed as the best coach in the world by Poveda’s current boss to personally contact him, but there are still questions to be asked about this incident.

Namely, you have to wonder about Victor Orta’s role at Leeds and how good he is at his job. It’s the Spaniard’s job to close out these deals, yet he’s had to call on Bielsa to win the teenager over.

You can interpret this in a couple of ways. Either Orta has shown a brilliant ability to adapt and swallow his pride or you can see it as a huge failure on his part to get negotiations sorted. If it’s a case of the latter, alarm bells should well and truly be ringing.

This isn’t the first time Orta has come into question either. Despite the director of football’s talks with Arsenal last summer, Eddie Nketiah was still recalled by his club after a lack of football.

Both men reportedly rate Poveda very highly but Bielsa isn’t the man in charge of transfers – Orta is.

With two weeks of the window left, it’s quite worrying that the Spaniard is struggling to get deals across the line himself. After the debacle surrounding Daniel James’ failed transfer in the final minutes of the last January window, it might just be a case of Leeds trying whatever necessary to ensure there isn’t a repeat.

That being said, the Leeds hierarchy’s ability to negotiate a transfer must be improved.

In other news, Leeds may finally be about to replace Chris Wood.