In January Krystian Bielik signed for Walsall on loan, looking for some playing time to help get his career back on track.
The Arsenal man had suffered a bad shoulder injury in pre-season, spending most of the campaign sidelined, but since joining the League One outfit he has yet to make a single appearance and has returned to London for treatment on a hamstring injury.
He had been carrying the muscle problem before signing with The Saddlers, but has been unable to shake off sufficiently to play. He now faces more time on the treatment table after suffering a setback.
“Krystian has had a flare up of the previous injury he came up with,” said Walsall boss, Dean Keates.
“We had him back up last week and were told he was ready to come back in. He trained twice last week and then he trained in the early part of this week.
“He’s had a bit of a problem again with his hamstring so he’s gone back down to Arsenal.
“They’ll assess him and we’ll see what happens from there.”
Walsall’s head of medical, Marc Czuczman, added, “Arsenal looked at him on Wednesday for us and they agreed that it is just a slight flare-up of the tendon, but the muscle fibres themselves are okay. The tendon though will take a little bit of time to heal.
“I’m actually devastated for Krystian because he was training really well. He’s had an unfortunate year with his shoulder earlier in the year – he’s just desperate to play football.”
The Polish U21 international was very highly rated when he signed from Legia Warsaw in 2015 for a fee of £2.5m, but it’s clear things haven’t worked out for him in the meantime.
Whether he has a long-term future is very much in doubt at this stage, but at the very least he deserves a run without any further injuries.
Good luck to him.
Does this happen as often at other clubs as well?
Seems like a lot of the highly rated youngsters we buy suffer long-term injuries with us that doesn’t allow them to progress “naturally”.
Odd…
Certainly seems that way with a lot of our younger players.
When was the last time we sent a young player out on loan for game time/experience and they actually come back better for it. Seems they go out to lower level clubs and don’t even play.
So what’s the point?
Are we just not picking the right clubs?
Maitland Niles, Bellerin. Jeff’s doing pretty well thus far.
Bielik was good last year for birmingham as well.
Jeff has played just 5 games this season. Not sure how that counts as “well thus far”
Bellerin doesn’t count.
His development is purely down to game time here. He was benched at Watford and barely played. He fits the original question.
Niles is the only one in recent years I can think of.
Iwobi?
It does, that’s the life of a footballer though. It’s so sad because I thought Beilek look promising when he played at CB for us the past 2 preseasons. There’s definitely a talented player in there, and I really like his mentality, seems like a smart level headed person when you hear him speak. I hope he can have a speedy recovery and wish him all the best. I guess at this point he should aim to be 100% by next preseason and aim to have a big impact.
Life is rarely a straight line upwards. Strength can come from the inevitable dips.
I certainly hope he has a long term future…be awful if he died from a sore tendon. Whether it is with Arsenal may be in doubt though
Don’t sleep on this kid. Still one of my fav academy prospects.
Hopefully he heals and gets re-instated back as a DM. Turning him into a CB has stunted his development significantly. Plus we have enough young CBs now.