Liverpool loanee Lewis Koumas has played 14 Championship games for Birmingham City this season
Lewis Koumas in action for Birmingham City(Image: Ryan Browne/Shutterstock)
It is the time of year where loans are up for discussion and Birmingham City have two temporary transfers that haven’t quite hit the spot.
Eiran Cashin has barely played for Blues this season and parent club Brighton will undoubtedly be debating whether their £9million defender is best served moving elsewhere in January.
The case of Liverpool loanee Lewis Koumas is more complex.
Blues boss Chris Davies has used Koumas in 14 of the 15 Championship games he has been available for since he arrived at St Andrew’s in August.
The problem is that Koumas has only made four starts and played 395 minutes in total. Having made 26 league starts for Stoke City last season, racking up almost 2,500 minutes in the process, this isn’t proving to be the second Championship loan that Koumas wanted.
Davies is aware that Liverpool might see fit to pull the plug given the number of Championship teams interested in the 20-year-old during the summer.
In an open, honest assessment of the winger’s loan to date, Davies said: “Lewis Koumas has not played as much as he would want to, he’s someone I have spoken to about his own status and to be fair to Lewis, he did show some really positive signs, but he’s just found himself down the pecking order slightly.
“With Lewis it’s a case of there being good communication between me and him, first and foremost, because that’s the most important relationship. I talk to him regularly. Then that builds out club to club and the agents and everything are involved.
“We brought Lewis here to help Birmingham City win games of football because that’s our number one objective but we also knew that we brought a player in that’s a Liverpool player that they wanted to see develop and improve.
“I always say if you’re not playing, I hope you’re getting as much development as you can in terms of training, meetings and coaching, but they all want the game time so if it comes to a point with Lewis, as an example, where he’s not feeling he’s getting the game time, or Liverpool feel he’s not, or we come to a situation, then we would look at it.”
Things can change quickly in football and there is still time for Koumas. Blues play eight games between now and January 4 when league leaders Coventry City come to town.
Patrick Roberts and Demarai Gray can’t play all of those matches.
Lewis Koumas
Davies continued: “With these eight games in such quick succession, with every conversation that I’ve had with players that are maybe feeling a little bit more peripheral, I’ve said let’s just focus on the here and now because this is a big month for us, there’s a lot of games.
“I see these players here for the season, no doubt about it, but we will cross that bridge when we get to January.
“I know that Lewis is going to start games in this eight-game period. He’s going to play a lot of minutes, I’m sure.”
Davies is a fan of Koumas. There were more experienced and proven wingers on Blues’ radar during the summer but club chiefs were impressed by Koumas’s work-rate.
The manager’s trust in Koumas was there for all to see on Monday when he brought him off the bench to see out a hard-fought win over Watford.
“I always say to the players that if I bring you on for one minute it’s a very important minute because it’s normally a key time in the game,” Davies added.
“It’s easy to feel slighted by that, ‘Oh, I’m just getting two minutes’, but they could be two decisive minutes so I do remind them of that.
“I do trust Lewis. There’s not a lack of trust in Lewis.
“He’s played off the right more than he would like to. I think he sees himself as a left-winger, I could see longer-term where he could even play as a striker and he knows he’s capable of that.
“I see him as a winger and probably stronger on the left but because of Keshi (Anderson) and Dimmy’s preference to play on the left he gives us a good option on the right.
“Lewis will get opportunities. He started brightly away at Coventry and then we had the man sent off, he did well against Swansea at home. He needs to keep developing his game and look to get his numbers up; goals, assists and his last action.
“But I like his intensity. He’s as quick as we’ve got in the squad, I would say. He’s as intense in his game as we’ve got in the squad. They are both things I really value so I’ve got a feeling he’s going to have a big part to play in these next few weeks.”
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