Veins of form have not come any richer for Rodrigo at Leeds United than right now. Only Leodensian Erling Haaland is scoring more goals per 90 minutes than Elland Road’s record signing.
Manchester City’s number nine has smashed in a freakish 18 goals in 13 appearances, at an average of 1.56 strikes per 90 minutes. Rodrigo’s 0.91 goals per 90 is otherwise unbeaten across the entire division.
Haaland, Harry Kane and Ivan Toney are the only players with more goals full stop than Rodrigo. Has the striker finally cracked it in his third season here? The experienced head seems uninterested if he has.
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“[I] just keep working,” he said. “Of course, I'm really happy because I'm in a good moment of form, but this is about [the] team. This is about winning games.
“Now we have to, as I said to you before, try to solve some problems we have in this first period of the season because individual performances don't matter if the team performance is not good enough.
“The only thing that really matters is winning games and that's why we are here (in Spain) working together. We try to work hard every day and everyone is important.
“I just want to keep working and try to help the team as much as possible.”
Rodrigo’s statistics show 0.49 goals per 90 in season one with Leeds, then a drop to just 0.24 per 90 in season two. In other words, he went from one goal every two full games to one in every four full matches.
The Spain international has been in the game for long enough to know he’s unlikely to sustain his current strike rate of nearly one goal in every full match. He’s not likely to care too much if team performances improve from where they were in the opening 14 matches.
“It's always hard to score goals,” he said. “I can't remember a game against Tottenham [Hotspur] away that some team has scored three goals.
“So scoring three goals against a team like Tottenham, a really strong defensive team, away is not easy and when you get this it’s really disappointing to go away without nothing. The question is about the team, about the collective tactics, it's not about individual performances because everyone is trying to do their best.
“We have to try to synchronise better the movements to defend and to attack, to try to solve this kind of problem because we play well, most of the games, and we should get more from these games.”
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