Club’s ‘joy’ over signing Liverpool player quickly disappearing – Injury problems won’t go away

If Naby Keita was hoping for a departure from Liverpool this summer could help spark his career back into action, then it appears it was false hope.

The midfielder has only featured once, briefly, for his new club since his arrival on a free transfer in the summer transfer window and it appears he’s not likely to add to that anytime soon.

Mitteldeutsche Zeitung cover the player today and how he was missing from Werder Bremen training today, just a week after his long-awaited debut for the club.

We’ve covered numerous reports from Germany on the player since his arrival, with Werder having pinned their hopes on him this season but been left disappointed as his injury issues have kept him out of action.

MZ report that there was a sense of ‘joy’, although that is an ‘understatement’ according to the newspaper when Keita arrived from Liverpool this summer.

They were delighted with the deal and had big plans for him, but an injury picked up before his first practice game means they had to wait to see him.

That finally happened last weekend in the clash with Köln last weekend, when he appeared for one minute in the eventual win.

The hope had been that he would be available for this weekend’s clash with Darmstadt, with their manager Torsten Lieberknecht even singling him out.

“If a Naby Keita is in your squad, then you can see: That’s a different story,” he is quoted as saying.

“(I’m) really happy that a player like Naby Keita is there in the Bundesliga. That he found his way from Liverpool to Bremen.”

Except, it appears he and the rest of the Bundesliga won’t be seeing him this weekend after all as the midfielder is ‘now in danger’ of being out of the game.

“Naby was sick today. We have to see whether he is on the training pitch tomorrow,” said Bremen coach Ole Werner in his press conference today.

NZ explain that while he wouldn’t have been a candidate to start anyway, even at full strength, thanks to his long absence, the hope had been he would at least be in the picture.

That now seems unlikely, and Werder will need to continue waiting patiently for their star signing from Liverpool to shake off whatever still ails him from his time at Anfield. How long that patience remains, however, to be seen.