After an injury-disrupted first half of the season on loan at Wigan Athletic, Arsenal defender Omar Rekik had hoped that a temporary move to Servette would prove to be more successful.
At present, though, such an eventuality appears rather unlikely following an administration error from the Swiss side.
According to 20 Minutes, Servette forgot to register Rekik and two of their other new signings for league matches.
As a result, unless Servette make a successful appeal, Rekik will not be able to play in league games for his loan club for the remainder of the campaign.
The 22-year-old has been registered to play in the Europa Conference League but he has yet to feature for Servette in that competition and the signs suggest that Arsenal could look to end his loan move early.
What would happen thereafter is uncertain but this is a hugely frustrating situation for Rekik, especially as Servette have an option to sign him permanently which seemingly now won’t be utilised.
If he was to return to Arsenal then Rekik wouldn’t be eligible to be called up for first-team matches as he is classed as a senior player due to his age and hasn’t been included in the Gunners’ Premier League and Champions League squads.
Not being able to play competitive football for the second half of the season would certainly not help Rekik’s development and he will be hoping that this issue can somehow be resolved.
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Jeorge Bird is the author of www.arsenalyouth.wordpress.com Follow him on Twitter @jeorgebird
That’s messed up. Lawyer up Servette
‘Forget’…..yeah right.
Arsenal can hardly complain though without looking like hypocrites after a certain young French centre back spent half a season twiddling his thumbs….
I use a checklist in my job. Even a program can incorporate the loan process from A to Z. It is ridiculous this keeps on happening.
I think you can checklist every last detail in any job. But as long as it still falls on a person to actually take the action and tick those items off, human error will be in play.
Must suck for Rekik. But honestly think the appeal should be successful since the loan deal was completed properly and everything is above board in the deal. Servette will probably have to pay a late processing fine or something to get this done.
At least he got a free T-shirt
Bastards, I’d say burn them to the ground but revenge is a dish best Servette cold
In addition to hoping the best regarding the appeal, it seems another solution would be to loan out a player to a league where loan players can still be registered. There are some. They already did that in one case and were able to register one of their 4 new signings. They actually didn’t forget to register players, but to deregister players they had already sold to other clubs in time, so there are no free slots to register a new player for the league. A valid loan deal would free up such a space and allow them to register… Read more »