Cardiff City may have killed two birds with one stone yesterday with the signing from West Brom of Polish international Krystian Bielik. Our new signing first made his reputation in this country by starring as a defensive midfielder for the likes of Derby and Birmingham, but has dropped back to play in central defence in recent years and, apparently, the plan is for him to be used as a central defender until our injury crisis in that area eases and then he will switch to playing as a number six.
So, it’s a clever signing in some ways for us and, with my memory of the early Bielik being considered one of the best midfielders in the Championship around five or six years ago, I’d definitely be claiming we’d got ourselves a tremendous signing if this was, say, the start of the 2019/20 season when he’d just signed for Derby.
Unfortunately, seven years on this is a signing which is a much more riskier one than it would have been back then and this is reflected in the price we are paying for him (something that I will come to again later). Some four months after signing for Derby, Bielik sustained an ACL injury in January 2020 which kept him out of acton until the following November, but, having regained his place in the first team, he picked up an identical injury early in 2021. Bielik returned a year to the day after this latest setback in January 2022 and scored for Derby who were now facing an inevitable relegation to the third tier following their massive points deduction.
Bielick moved to Birmingham on loan for the following season and then made the deal permanent. In three seasons at St. Andrews, Bielik was largely injury free as he clocked up around 120 first team appearances before moving to West Brom around this time last year.
Bielik’s time in a struggling Baggies team cannot be deemed a success. Having had shoulder surgery while on loan to Walsall from Arsenal early in his career, Bielik was absent for a long stretch of last season with a shoulder problem – although I must emphasise that I could not confirm whether these injuries were to the same shoulder.
Essentially, the messages I’ve seen from supporters of the clubs he played for early in his career (i.e. Derby and Birmingham) are of the good player if you can keep him fit variety, while West Brom fans seem more surprised, and delighted, by the size of the fee of £2.5 million we paid for him. They are very complimentary to their club for managing to get so much for someone who was just one year into a three year contract after they’d paid a reported £900,000 for him. However, I must admit to being baffled by what I saw in one Baggies podcast which talked about Bielik in terms of him being some washed up veteran in his mid 30s when, at 28, he is at an age where, traditionally, players are considered to be at their peak!
I should say here that there is no confirmation from City that £2.5 million is the correct fee we paid. Selling clubs have a tendency to release the maximum potential value of a deal, thereby including extra payments for all sorts of unlikely events that never end up happening and the one figure I’ve heard from the Cardiff end (albeit from a pretty unreliable podcast) is £1.5 million – it’s worth saying there that the Chat GPT report I asked for on Bielik’s signing concluded he was a good buy, but not on a three year deal (as we have done) for a fee over £2 million.
Whatever the fee we’re paying for Bielik, it’s some way short of the reported £10 million, including add ons, Derby were reported to have paid for him seven years ago and, in a market that I’d say has seen a slight rise in player valuations since then, that is suggestive of Bielik not being the player he once was even if you make an allowance for the fact that age plays a big part in these sort of things.
The fact that the last of Bielik’s eleven senior caps for Poland was won in 2023 at a time when that country is going through a decline in terms of qualification for major tournaments again suggests a player whose best days are behind him.
However, that need not mean that Bieleich cannot be a success at City. For a start, you would expect his experience of this division and his general know how to be invaluable at. a club with such a young squad. Furthermore, when you consider how good I can remember him being, I feel that even with a decline from those levels, he could still be a valuable member of the squad. Given that the plan seems to be to have Bielik as the eventual replacement for Ryan Wintle, I can definitely imagine that he would be a step up from our Player of the year from last season.
That said, my final thought on this deal is that it’s hard to see, or believe, that Bielik is a player we’ve been chasing for the four months since promotion was confirmed. Therefore, while “panic buy” is putting things too strongly I believe, this does have the feel of a transfer we’ve been somewhat forced into given our problems at centreback – would Bielik have been on our radar a month ago?
Anyway, on to what is the main point of this message – the quiz! As always I’ll post the answers on the morning after match day.
60s. As a left sided central defender, you would suspect that this Yorkshireman would be much in demand today. Sheffield United were his first club and he spent a decade with them with the last seven years of it as a pretty regular member of the first team. When he moved on, it was to play for another team which played in black shorts (back then at least) and a distinctive shirt. Here he was in competition with a well established centre back pairing and so he was more of a squad player than a regular and when his side were promoted to the top flight, he decided to move to the Midlands and get a full time job. Still playing in black shorts, but with a plainer shirt, the irony was that, as a part time player, he was turning out for a side that probably got more national media coverage at that time than either of his first two teams would have done. He was part of what has to be the most famous game in this club’s history and helped to establish the team in their new, more illustrious, setting, before a move to a club which played in the same colours and also had an animal as its nickname. Can you name the player being described here?
70s. A few years before this player was turning out for Sheffield United during this decade, Tina Turner was singing about a place that was almost, but not quite, his surname. Name the player!
80s. Beginning at Sheffield United during the 80s, his stay at Cardiff crossed two different decades and he ended up managing south Wales scapegoats as well as Gwent Cuckoos – who is he?
90s. Rebel rat doubling up as England international. (4,7)
00s. This Sheffield United player from this decade was a full international who shared his name with two other players who, between them, played international football in the three preceding decades. Who are they?
10s. Signify our bills? Sounds like it anyway!
20s. Which former Sheffield United player from this decade was sent off twice within three weeks earlier this year while playing for his current club, scored for his country in the World Cup and was part of a devastating defeat this week?
