Krystian Bielik - Joined Birmingham on a 3 year deal

[StaffsRam]

If he wanted to stay, and if he stayed fit then he would undoubtedly be a great asset in L1. Sadly, he doesn’t want to stay, and with the amount of cloggers in L1 he’s unlikely to stay fit. Freeing up wages for 4/5 players is just icing on the cake. Let him go.

[tomsdubs]

If I was the manager as soon as a player showed they didn't want to be here anymore i'd get rid as fast as feasibly possible, only going to a negative impact on dressing room and a waste of precious resources especially in our current state. Bielik seems like a nice lad so it works out best for everyone involved to loan him out. Byrne I wouldn't even want him to play even if he had to stay after failed legal action.

[whiteroseram]

Loan to the championship makes perfect sense, seems ideal in that sense 

The shame is Bham just doesn't feel like the best one for his career, bit of a basket case atm and could well struggle again (I suspect they will). 

Does he have another year on his contract after this? Just so I know how much we have to care about his career/ value beyond this

[Anag Ram]

3 minutes ago, whiteroseram said:

Loan to the championship makes perfect sense, seems ideal in that sense 

The shame is Bham just doesn't feel like the best one for his career, bit of a basket case atm and could well struggle again (I suspect they will). 

Does he have another year on his contract after this? Just so I know how much we have to care about his career/ value beyond this

Don’t worry CK has promised to bail them out 

[r_wilcockson]

1 hour ago, Millenniumram said:

One of the worst places he could have ended up, Birmingham is a really scummy club with the scummiest fans in football imo. Only away fans I’ve ever had trouble with at Pride Park, and that includes Forest and Leeds supporters. In the Championship Watford was the far better option, a club much more likely to have a good season, and he may not have had to play so many games. Ah well, good luck to him and hope he performs well, to restore his value if nothing else.

Will need replacing to give us some cover for Bird, I suspect we might sign McDonald as a cheap option to do this, allowing us to reinvest most of Bielik’s wages elsewhere. 

A lot of people seem to be forgetting we have Thompson and how much of a baller he was at times playing against the best teams in the championship last season. 

[Wolfie]

Bielik, like George Thorne, is a tragedy of lost potential to us and what might have been.

He has been appalling value for money to date, though, so unfortunately & given our current position, we need to cut our losses and use the money saved to strengthen.

A real shame it came to this but can we really afford to gamble a few more million on him staying fit - even if he did want to stay with us?.

[Caerphilly Ram]

11 minutes ago, whiteroseram said:

 Does he have another year on his contract after this? Just so I know how much we have to care about his career/ value beyond this

I believe so, signed a 5 year deal in 2019 so contracted until the summer of 2024

[Simmo’s left foot]

Quote

He has been appalling value for money to date, though, so unfortunately & given our current position, we need to cut our losses and use the money saved to strengthen.

I very much doubt there will be any money from him leaving, given what we owe Arsenal in future payments. We save on his high wages but then that saving gets offset against what we have to pay out in the staged transfer fee. Its all a disaster to be honest, and a good example of the previous awful financial management of the club.

[ilkleyram]

14 minutes ago, Simmo’s left foot said:

I very much doubt there will be any money from him leaving, given what we owe Arsenal in future payments. We save on his high wages but then that saving gets offset against what we have to pay out in the staged transfer fee. Its all a disaster to be honest, and a good example of the previous awful financial management of the club.

I don't think that's fair criticism. Bielik was everything we were asking for - a young player cast off by a PL club with experience of the lower leagues and looking to develop his career.  At the time we were pushing to get promoted to the PL.  It suited both parties.  He was (is) a big, good, mobile player with a good eye for a pass who could also play in a number of positions.  The real potential was that if he had developed, the fee we paid for him would have been a very good investment.  As with George Thorne.

It's no ones fault that both Bielik and Thorne were subject to significant injuries that held back both their careers, or in George's case effectively finished it.  It remains to be seen whether Bielik can pick up or not but his is not an example of poor financial management of the club unless they were invested with the hindsight superpower.

[Gee SCREAMER !!]

4 minutes ago, ilkleyram said:

I don't think that's fair criticism. Bielik was everything we were asking for - a young player cast off by a PL club with experience of the lower leagues and looking to develop his career.  At the time we were pushing to get promoted to the PL.  It suited both parties.  He was (is) a big, good, mobile player with a good eye for a pass who could also play in a number of positions.  The real potential was that if he had developed, the fee we paid for him would have been a very good investment.  As with George Thorne.

It's no ones fault that both Bielik and Thorne were subject to significant injuries that held back both their careers, or in George's case effectively finished it.  It remains to be seen whether Bielik can pick up or not but his is not an example of poor financial management of the club unless they were invested with the hindsight superpower.

Thorne was a reasonable fee as he was a premier league player who'd just signed a three year deal and had shown he was well above championship level during his loan.  The fee for a player who'd already had injury issues and had just one full season in League 1 and couldn't get games for Walsall the year before was crazy to me. 

[Crewton]

14 minutes ago, Gee SCREAMER !! said:

Thorne was a reasonable fee as he was a premier league player who'd just signed a three year deal and had shown he was well above championship level during his loan.  The fee for a player who'd already had injury issues and had just one full season in League 1 and couldn't get games for Walsall the year before was crazy to me. 

I don't think there was much difference between the two cases : Thorne had also had a bad injury that kept him out for half a season a couple of years before he joined us. Bielek had played 34 times for Charlton, got the motm award in the PO Final that saw them promoted and he was in the L1 team of the year. The fee was too big though, another example of Mel paying over the odds, but like GT if he'd stayed fit we'd be selling him for 2-3 times what we paid for him.

As much as we've overpaid for players under MM, we've also had incredible misfortune with serious onfield injuries. 

[Millenniumram]

1 hour ago, r_wilcockson said:

A lot of people seem to be forgetting we have Thompson and how much of a baller he was at times playing against the best teams in the championship last season. 

I’m not forgetting Thompson, though I do think saying he was a “baller” last season is a bit of stretch. He struggled to make much of an impact in most Championship games imo - think he was brought through a year too early probably, but we had little choice. Do think he’ll be well suited to League One though, and with some experience under his belt now, he’ll be an excellent asset this season.

However, he’s not comparable to Bielik. Thompson is an energetic, battling “terrier” type player, very much in the Graeme Shinnie mould. As a result, he’s much better played slightly further forward, as a box to box midfielder, rather than an out and out defensive midfielder. On the other hand, Bielik is the sort of player who can dictate a game from deep. With him gone, we only really have Bird left in our squad that’s capable of doing that. It’s a vital role, so we really do need to bring in some CDM cover. As I say, McDonald was much more that sort of player pre-illness at Fulham. 

[r_wilcockson]

2 minutes ago, Millenniumram said:

I’m not forgetting Thompson, though I do think saying he was a “baller” last season is a bit of stretch. He struggled to make much of an impact in most Championship games imo - think he was brought through a year too early probably, but we had little choice. Do think he’ll be well suited to League One though, and with some experience under his belt now, he’ll be an excellent asset this season.

However, he’s not comparable to Bielik. Thompson is an energetic, battling “terrier” type player, very much in the Graeme Shinnie mould. As a result, he’s much better played slightly further forward, as a box to box midfielder, rather than an out and out defensive midfielder. On the other hand, Bielik is the sort of player who can dictate a game from deep. With him gone, we only really have Bird left in our squad that’s capable of doing that. It’s a vital role, so we really do need to bring in some CDM cover. As I say, McDonald was much more that sort of player pre-illness at Fulham. 

I've not seen/heard much of Korey Smith, but doesn't he fill the dictating play from deep role as well? From having only 5 contracted players, Iare we now going too much the other way?

[Sparkle]

Well he has to pass a medical at Birmingham yet ! 
Extremely sad to be going to a club like Birmingham ! 
we need his wages off our payroll to make other things happen 

we still owe Arsenal £5 million apparently!

Can we sell him in January if he has a great World Cup? 

[Reggie Greenwood]

15 minutes ago, Sparkle said:

Well he has to pass a medical at Birmingham yet ! 
Extremely sad to be going to a club like Birmingham ! 
we need his wages off our payroll to make other things happen 

we still owe Arsenal £5 million apparently!

Can we sell him in January if he has a great World Cup? 

Not sure how Brum can afford the loan fee and wages when apparently they don't have a pot to piss in and the pot they did have  was full of holes. If he goes there i think he would be back after the first payment was due , seems a strange one this.

[RodleyRam]

7 hours ago, Elwood P Dowd said:

I would hope that we have that covered, if he is injured whilst playing for Birmingham they, hopefully, continue to pay his wages for the agreed loan period. If not, and he gets injured, we have his wages and the wages of  players LR wants to bring in to pay.

I would hope that too but wasn't sure if that's how these things were actually structured...

[Elwood P Dowd]

41 minutes ago, RodleyRam said:

I would hope that too but wasn't sure if that's how these things were actually structured...

It would be a big risk to loan out Beilik only to have him injured in his first game and return to us. We would be left paying the wages of an injured player, hopefully the club has taken steps to minimise the financial risk of this loan given Beilik’s fitness record.

[Rammy03]

Is he going to Birmingham then?

Edited July 29, 2022 by Rammy03

[Heisenberg]

Confirmed.

[DCFC1388]

Hopefully means we can bring more in