The Athletic’s Wolverhampton Wanderers correspondent Tim Spiers has recently discussed the lack of goals bagged by Leander Dendoncker.
Wolves’ Belgian midfielder has been situated at Molineux since the summer of 2018, having initially arrived on loan from Anderlecht before the move became permanent a year later for £12.42m (per Transfermarkt).
The 25-year-old middleman has made 96 appearances for the Old Gold in total, in which he has managed to score eight goals and not bag a single assist.
This season, in particular, Dendoncker has not scored a goal in 12 Premier League appearances for Nuno Espirito Santo’s side.
During the latest episode of The Athletic’s The Molineux View podcast, Spiers discussed the Belgian and aired his belief that he should be scoring more for Wolves. (13:37)
He said: “Dendoncker hasn’t scored this season, despite getting in a high number of goalscoring positions. He’s the one for me, he gets in the positions, he should’ve scored against [Aston] Villa.
“He’s hit the bar with a header at Arsenal which [Pedro] Neto then puts in the rebound. So, he’s getting in the positions but he hasn’t scored yet this season. He’s the one that can do it.
“They love Dendoncker and they see him being a part of this team going forward – next season and beyond – they think there’s more to come from him and I do too.
“I would like to see him score more goals. If he could get eight/nine/ten goals this season, that’ll be a huge sharing of the load that’s been left by [Raul] Jimenez’s void.
“That’s not going to happen now, he’s not going to go on a massive goalscoring run but he’s got to improve his goalscoring tally.”
TIF Thoughts on what Tim Spiers said about Leander Dendoncker…
As can be seen in what the reporter had to say, he believes that the midfielder is well-liked at Wolves, however, he needs to be more impactful in front of goal.
Should Leander Dendoncker be scoring more goals?
No, not his job to do
Yes, he needs to improve
Over his 12 appearances in the Premier League so far this season, the Belgian has managed a fairly solid 6.76/10 average rating, which has made him the Old Gold’s eighth-best player (per WhoScored).
So, that would suggest that the 25-year-old midfielder is still having a fairly positive impact for the Molineux club.
However, having averaged 1.3 shots per game over the outings and not found the back of the net, that would certainly suggest he needs to be bagging more goals.