Jon Whitney says Krystian Bielik should be available for the club in the next couple of weeks, after suffering a setback in his recovery from a hamstring injury.

Bielik joined Walsall on loan in the January transfer window, but he’s still yet to make his debut for the League One side. In fact, some fans of the club are starting to wonder where he is. One blogger wrote:

“Jon Whitney will have a full strength squad to choose from apart from Arsenal loanee Krystian Bielik who has turned into Houdini and hasn’t been seen since he joined on loan in January.”

At the start of February, Whitney said there was a possibility that Bielik would be fit for that weekend. Now we’re almost at the end of the month and he still hasn’t linked up with the team.

The Walsall manager explained to the club website why the centre-back hasn’t joined the squad so far.

“Krystian has had a setback in his rehabilitation,” he said. “Unfortunately he has tweaked his knee during late-stage rehab which has delayed the start of his loan spell with us.

“Krystian is due at the club in the next 10 days to meet with the squad and take part in some group sessions, and we look forward to Krystian joining the group in the next couple of weeks.”

https://www.instagram.com/p/BYkoYSSj4jy/?hl=en&taken-by=krystianbielik

With Arsenal this season, Bielik made four appearances for the u23s. Two of those were in August, after the 20-year-old’s promising pre-season with the first-team. After that, a shoulder injury kept him out until mid-December. His last match for the academy was on December 15th.

When he plays, the youngster has generally earned a lot of praise. He just needs to put a run of games together now, before he gets stuck in a loop of injuries. Hopefully he can do that when he returns in a couple of weeks.