“This Leeds pressing isn’t even funny anymore. If Mateusz Klich forces poor Joe Allen any further back he’ll be in 2016 and playing for Liverpool again.”
That wonderful line from Katie Whyatt, in the BBC Sport live blog of Marcelo Bielsa’s first match in charge of Leeds United, struck such a chord with the fans that it went viral. The screencap still occasionally does the rounds nearly five years later.
It’s fitting that Mateusz Klich is the name cited. The Poland international was the beating heart of Bielsa’s Leeds from day one.
Klich had arrived a year before the club’s glorious reawakening, that 3-1 win over Stoke City on the opening day of the 2018-19 season. But his debut campaign had been something to forget, a familiar tale after a near-decade of false dawns and midtable Championship mediocrity.
Signed as a 27-year-old from FC Twente for a reported fee of £1.5million, the midfielder was one of the first arrivals under new owner Andrea Radrizzani, new director of football Victor Orta and new manager Thomas Christiansen.
Leeds had narrowly missed out on the play-offs the year before and the hope was that Klich – one of many new additions – would help usher in a new era, one that left the bitter memories of failure under Massimo Cellino, Gulf Finance House and Ken Bates behind.
But things didn’t quite work out that way. Christiansen never took to Klich, handing him just five Championship appearances.
In the Pole’s only league start that season, he made a costly mistake in a 3-1 defeat to Cardiff. Christiansen publically chastised him, and he was promptly sent back out to the Eredivisie on loan.
“In the midfield, I slipped and lost the ball, after which we conceded a goal. Then the coach refused to pick me, because of one mistake that I couldn’t do much about,” Klich told Voetbal International.
“I became very angry with him after that and it was over for me for Leeds. I wouldn’t play anymore under that coach.”
Christiansen followed him out of the exit door, sacked less than a fortnight later. Paul Heckingbottom then came in, guiding the Whites to yet another underwhelming bottom-half finish.
By the time Bielsa arrived in the summer of 2018, Klich was already something of a forgotten man, seemingly to become yet another of Leeds’ several dozen “remember him?” signings of their 16-year stint in the Football League.
Indeed, Klich was reportedly never…
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