The last few weeks have been a testing period for Brentford, who have stuttered in their promotion push and lost three on the bounce for the first time all season. 

It's been a difficult time for Bees loanee Joel Valencia as well. The 26-year-old joined Polish top-tier side Legia Warsaw on a season-long loan back in September but has seen opportunities dry up over the last few weeks.

In fact, the winger has not featured once for the club since the start of February and has instead been resigned to being an unused substitute.

The 26-year-old's impressive 2018/19 campaign in the Polish top tier for Piast Gliwice, which saw him score six goals and add six assists, earned him the move to west London but he's been unable to rediscover that sort of form since returning to the Ekstraklasa on loan.

In all, he's featured 12 times and failed to add either a goal or an assist.

He'll be hoping he gets another chance to impress soon but Warsaw have gone unbeaten since he last featured, taking seven points from three games and returning to the top of the league table.

It seems Valencia has some added competition, as well, because his club signed 23-year-old winger Jasur Yakhshiboev from Pakhtakor in Uzbekistan during the January window.

Yakhshiboev has yet to feature for his new club but he also featured on the bench for Warsaw's 5-2 win against Wisla Plock on the weekend, indicating that he could be set to get his chance soon.

That surely means that the Brentford loanee is going to have to work even harder for his chance with the Polish club.

So far it's certainly not been the move that either Valencia or the Championship club will have been hoping for, and it's hard to see him forcing his way into Thomas Frank's side when he returns to the Bees – particularly if they're a Premier League club at that point.