He’s lucky that he can make up for his shortcomings with other areas of his game.
Because if they were to start falling off at the same rate, then you might just have to start questioning his place in the team. Mateusz Klich has started all bar one game for Leeds United so far this season, but hasn’t been able to quite match the level of production that saw him score ten goals and chip in with nine assists last campaign.
And it’s left one former Leeds United player wanting more. Speaking to Football Insider, Noel Whelan said that finding the back of the net is the one area that Klich needs to work on in the second half of the season:
“There’s more goal-scoring capacity in him, considering he got into double figures last year, when it comes to goal scoring he’s had great chances as well, he should have a lot more goals to his name. That’s one area he can improve on and I’m sure he’d want more goals himself. He needs to shoot more from outside the box like he did last year, he needs to trust himself. It seems that goal-scoring confidence has gone.”
Is Klich in contention to be our player of the year?
Yes
No
The fact of the matter is though, Klich is arguably one of the players that has become so useful to the club in so many other areas, that he should be escaping criticism when it comes to his goals. Obviously it would be great if he could get some more, but when you look at his overall game, you can see that he brings in so much more.
Whether it be his 81.2% pass completion rate, his 1.9 tackles per game which puts him 4th in the team overall, 1.2 dribbles which puts him 5th in the team or his key passes which is 4th most in the team, he’s near the top of the list in a number of significant categories, so like I said, he deserves a little bit of leeway when it comes to finding the back of the net.
Perhaps this is all just an effect of Marcelo Bielsa’ infamous style of play, something that Klich has talked about in the past, that something has to give in order to maintain that level of all-round performance.
And would you really be willing to risk some of those other attributes in order to get a few more goals? That’s the question we need to be asking ourselves.