{{primary_category}}
{{/primary_category}} 
MOT View: Leeds may have missed out on Mallik Wilks windfall after PL links
Former Leeds United academy graduate Mallik Wilks is having a sensational season at Hull City and is attracting admiring glances from the Premier League.
That is according to Football League World who report that Burnley are monitoring the 22-year-old ahead of a possible summer move.
He has scored 20 goals in 40 appearances so far this season and has helped to inspire Hull to the top of League One as they eye automatic promotion back to the second-tier.
Wilks is well known in West Yorkshire after climbing the youth ranks at Leeds before making his senior debut for the Whites at the age of 18 in 2017.
However this proved to be his only outing for Leeds and after a spate of loan moves that included a successful spell at Doncaster Rovers, he sealed a permanent switch away from Elland Road in 2019 to Barnsley.
From there he moved on to Hull last year and he has not looked back since. And Leeds will surely regret the early departure of a man that has sprung into the form of his fledgling career.
We think the club may have acted prematurely in sanctioning his permanent departure from the club.
It is important to caveat this with the fact that his dazzling displays have come in the third-tier of English football and that we have a whole host of exciting U23 prospects waiting in the wings to become first-team stars under Marcelo Bielsa.
Joe Gelhardt and Sam Greenwood are just a couple of names buzzing around Thorp Arch these days.
But Wilks is proving that he is far beyond League One level and having only just turned 22 in December there is plenty more in the locker.
Furthermore, it only took Wilks five minutes to slot past Kiko Casilla in the Whites net when we were dumped out of the League Cup by Hull earlier on this season.
He never played a minute of football under Bielsa and we think that’s a great shame – had he been given a first-team chance who knows how he would have progressed.
Even if we had continued to loan him out for a season or two his value would have sky-rocketed and we would have surely raked in more than the £990,000 we received from Barnsley [Transfermarkt].
It can be difficult to convince players to stay when other clubs are offering regular first-team football but the form of Wilks shows maybe we should have done a bit more to keep him.
Premier League clubs don’t come knocking at your door in League One for nothing and we could witness first-hand his development next season if he ends up at Burnley.
In other Leeds United news, Paul Robinson is surprised at £32k/pw Whites ace being linked with a move away.