Arsenal loanee Catalin Cirjan finally made his return to the Rapid starting lineup on Friday, after a long spell without a league start.

Arsenal 21-year-old Catalin Cirjan is on loan with Romanian club Rapid this season, and a glance at his appearance stats would probably leave you thinking things weren’t going too badly.

The youngster has played 16 times for his loan club this season, which is a decent total for mid-December.

But the problem is that so few of those appearances have been starts, at least in recent months.

Cirjan started out well, making the starting lineup in four of Rapid’s first five games and coming on for the entire second half in the fifth.

But after his start in a 2-0 defeat to Petrolul on August 13th, Cirjan went four months without another start in the league.

The Arsenal loanee made eight appearances from the bench in the league, and he did make two starts for Rapid in the Romanian Cup, but it took until December 15th for him to make it back into the league lineup.

Funnily enough, Cirjan finally made his return on Friday against the same team he’d made his last appearance against – Petrolul.

This time around, the Arsenal midfielder completed 84% of his passes, created two chances, completed two of two attempted dribbles, and won five of his nine duels.

Cirjan was substituted after 55 minutes, but it’s not clear whether that was a comment on his performance or just a result of the fact it was his third start in over four months.

Rapid are next in action on Wednesday, December 20th at 18:30 GMT.