Coventry City must take transfer action with Dutch player – He only played 38 minutes last season | OneFootball

After a tough first season in England, Coventry City should send Raphael Borges Rodrigues out on loan.

Coventry City will be seeking to mount another promotion challenge next season, and there will be some reshaping of the squad to be done in order to achieve that, with both departures and incomings necessary.

The Sky Blues reached the play-off final in 2023 and have continued to knock on the door, reaching the semi-finals of the play-offs last year under the management of Frank Lampard, before a perhaps unfortunate loss to Sunderland at the Stadium of Light due to a late Dan Ballard winner.

Coventry have built an impressive squad in recent years, with their scouting team taking a lot of the glory for bringing in some relatively unknown, at least to EFL neutrals, players and either turning them into stars or at least majorly developing them.

However, one player whereby that formula hasn’t necessarily gone to plan, at least yet, would be Raphael Borges Rodrigues, more often simply known as Raphael, who joined from Australian A League side Macarthur last summer.

Time for Coventry to cut Raphael loose for a while

Having moved from Australia last summer, the Netherlands-born Australia youth international managed to play just 38 minutes of football across the Championship and the FA Cup in the 2024/25 campaign.

Neither Mark Robins in the early stages of the campaign nor Lampard for the rest of it appeared to have any trust or belief in the level of quality that Raphael could yet show.

The 21-year-old winger hasn’t even had enough time to show flashes of any real quality or his specific positive attributes, and his career appears to be on hold for the moment after last season.

Raphael, who began his career within the City Football Group with Melbourne City before his move to Macarthur, had only ever played a year and a bit of first-team football in Australia, but showed enough quality for Coventry’s usually impressive scouting team to pick him up.

As he heads into a second pre-season with Coventry, having signed a deal until the summer of 2028, it makes no sense for him to remain with the Sky Blues for the 2025/26 season.

A permanent deal may be hasty and leave Coventry regretting things, so they may be reluctant to do that, but it makes no sense for either club or the player to go through a similar situation next year – especially with the ambitions and level of the team having only been raised since his arrival.

Coventry looking to be ambitious

Keeping hold of Raphael for at least a season, but allowing him to depart the Coventry Building Society Arena on a loan deal, would seem like the smartest and most sensible decision that they can and should make this summer.

In terms of his competition for places, Coventry have the likes of Tatsuhiro Sakamoto and Ephron Mason-Clark as wingers, as well as other forwards such as Haji Wright, Ellis Simms, Norman Bassette and Brandon Thomas-Asante.

In terms of out and out wingers, it is perhaps limited to Sakamoto and Mason-Clark, so there may well be a bit of patience required by Raphael for Coventry to recruit some bodies in his position before letting him depart, even on a temporary basis.

A lack of experience, a bit of turmoil and upheaval mid-way through the campaign, and the pressure of a promotion push worked against Raphael last season, and it will be paramount for him to get away and get minutes under his belt this year – for both himself and for Coventry.