Same happened with Guntveit. I know plenty of people who slagged him off for apparently doing nothing in his time at Aberdeen. But when he was out with that achilles injury for months, there was a definite lack of bite and precision in the middle of the park, and the service our strikers (ie Winters, Zerouali, etc) received definitely dropped in quality when Cato was out.
Welcome back Chris. I had a look on a Plymouth fans site about a year after Clark had left us, and they seemed to like him. Didn't rant and rave about him, but most definitely didn't slate him. Suppose its the same as us really. Hopefully he's matured a bit and his balls have grown a bit now.