Mateusz Klich is enjoying regular first team football back in The Netherlands, but now that Leeds have changed the head coach since he departed on loan, he has set his sights on reviving his career at Elland Road next season.
In the first half of the season Klich had only one start for Leeds in the league, and that ended in disappointment after his error started a move that led to one of the Cardiff goals in a 3-1 defeat. But he has started the last three games for FC Utrecht, getting the game time he needs to be considered for Poland’s World Cup finals squad.
Klich told Dutch outlet De Stentor "I did not have a good relationship with the coach, Thomas Christiansen. He happened to be fired this week after the defeat against Cardiff. What has happened between us? I do not want to go into details too much. It's only frustrating when you know you can handle the level, but do not get a chance to show it."
This doesn’t tell us a lot we couldn’t already guess, as he hasn’t given us any juicy details about what riled him about the apparently easy-going Christiansen. It might just have been Christiansen’s preference for fielding Phillips and O’Kane, though the relationship between the two could hardly have been helped by Klich’s regular complaints on social media.
As far as his Dutch loan spell and the future is concerned, Klich said "I know this competition and I now know that I am doing well here. In any case, it is not new to me. I love to play football and I'm here to play a lot of matches again. That is also necessary, because I will probably return to Leeds United in the summer, where my contract runs until 2020."
So clearly he thinks that he might get the chance to make a fresh start at Leeds under Heckingbottom, but he will have to wait for the chance to impress the new head coach, who didn’t arrive until the transfer window had slammed shut. His problem will be the number of options Leeds have in central midfield, though the Heck might be looking to make changes after the disappointing showing of O’Kane in particular in his first game in charge.
Klich will also face competition from Forshaw and Ideguchi, who were signed just as he departed, though the latter seems to be getting a lot less game time during his own loan spell. Ideguchi has taken to the field for only 62 minutes in total at our Spanish feeder club Cultural Leonesa, having appeared in four different games. So unlike Klich he could be struggling to stake a claim for a place in his country’s World Cup squad, in his case Japan.
I’d like to see Klich get a chance next season, if only because he cost us £1.5 million, which would be a shocking waste of money if he didn’t make it. But he could do without winding up the Heck on social media if he doesn’t get selected right away. Just keep it behind closed doors and go and have a word with the head coach in his office.