Leeds United have confirmed that Paul Hart has resigned his position as director of the club’s academy.

When Hart took over in September it seemed to be excellent news, and at the time I wrote that “Many of us feared for the future of the club’s academy when Neil Redfearn fell out with Cellino and left us for pastures new, but it seems the younger players will be in good hands after all.”

My enthusiasm was of course down to the success of his previous spell in that role from 1993 to 1997, as the man who nurtured the talents of the players who became the O’Leary babes around the turn of the century.

But now we’ve heard that the 62-year-old has left his post, after agreed to terminate his contract during talks with the club earlier this week. He took charge of the Under-21s for the final time during a 2-1 win at Bolton Wanderers last night. The club broke the news with a statement on the official website.

“Leeds United can confirm that Paul Hart has left his post as the club’s head of academy in order to allow more time to attend to personal matters. The club is extremely grateful to Paul for his fantastic service to the academy and fully respects the reasons behind his departure. He leaves with our best wishes for the future. The club will now start the search for a suitable replacement for his role at the academy.”

I did hope that this was an April Fools’ joke, but you’d like to think the club would have come up with something much funnier. Could it be yet another sign that all is not well behind the scenes at Leeds United?

The Yorkshire Post reckon that although the official reason relates to an illness in Hart’s family, he was also ‘frustrated with certain matters at Thorp Arch, including the sudden addition of former Doncaster Rovers players Paul and Jack McKay to the development squad in January’. If Hart goes straight into a job with another club it will be a sure sign that the ‘personal matters’ were not the real reason he decided to leave.

Hart’s departure comes immediately after the departure of Luke Parkin, which seems odd as he had been thought to be one of our brightest young prospects, and had been included in the first team squad for last season’s home game with Fulham.

We have to hope that Massimo Cellino is as committed to the club’s excellent youth programme as previous regimes have been, but after the departures of Redfearn and now Hart during the last 12 months you have to wonder whether that is the case.

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