BBC pundit Noel Whelan has claimed that Leeds United summer signings Jay-Roy Grot and Pawel Cibicki are not the answer to the team’s attacking problems.
United slumped to their sixth defeat in seven matches on Tuesday night, with the loss to fellow promotion hopefuls Derby County their fifth in six Championship matches.
Leeds have scored a reasonable 23 goals from 15 league fixtures, but have been markedly less effective in an attacking sense since their horror run began in late September.
Grot, 19, and Cibicki, 23, were among the four forwards signed by Leeds in the summer – along with Pierre-Michel Lasogga and Cabel Ekuban – but both have been stuck on the fringes and have yet to contribute a single goal to the team.
“If Lasogga gets injured, from what I’ve seen of Grot and Cibicki, I can’t see them being the answer,” he said on BBC Radio Leeds on Tuesday night.
“I’m sick and tired of hearing people talking about age, and [saying] they’re young, that’s a poor excuse because you’ve got people playing in the first-team at 16, 17, 18.
“So once you come across that white line, you’re a man, you know what you’re doing, you know your job, you get it done.”
OPINION
It is little wonder that Whelan is underwhelmed by Grot and Cibicki. So are most Leeds fans. Grot has the athletic qualities but much to learn about the art of centre-forward play, while Cibicki has done little in his two League Cup starts to suggest that manager Thomas Christiansen has been wrong not to trust him with a single minute of Championship action.