Sorry to say, but the clutch is one of the most important parts of the car.
If i have my clutch bad, the car will get the power output of the engine in a different way, making the wait distribution on acceleration different, changing the handling of the car.
So a consistent clutch is very important on the car. If you don't have the clutch right, the engine won't perform well and sometimes even runs hot or cold because it has to work to hard to power the car. So, wrong clutch changes the performance of the engine which definitely changes the handling of the car...
That's just my 2 cent on why a clutch is important (and why i suck at it :S)