Blues manager Kieran McKenna says young duo Cameron Humphreys and Elkan Baggott have been unlucky not to be involved more during the first half of the season and that there will be discussions on whether to send them out on loan in January.

Midfielder Humphreys, 22, who spent a successful spell on loan at Wycombe Wanderers last season, has made only two brief sub appearances in the Championship this term, in addition to starting the Carabao Cup tie at Bromley in August.

Indonesia international central defender Baggott, 23, who has had stints out on loan at Gillingham, Cheltenham, Bristol Rovers and Blackpool over the last three seasons, is yet to make a senior appearance during this campaign.

The pair have featured regularly in the U21s and were among the scorers in last night’s 3-0 victory over Charlton, Humphreys also bagging two assists.


Asked whether there will be talks regarding sending them out on loan in January, McKenna admitted it’s something which will be looked into.

“It’s certainly a discussion point,” he said. “They’ve both been really unlucky, to be honest.

“I think our injury record, first and foremost. It’s really hard to predict that we would have had, and I’ll try to think off the top of my head what we’ve had apart from Wes [Burns] and Conor [Townsend], who were injured before the season, really, really minimal injuries over the course of the year.

“We’ve carried 22 bodies all year, which we’re pretty comfortable with. You’re usually banking on having a fair few unavailable, but generally we’ve had the large, large, large majority of that group available all the time, so the likes of Cameron, Elkan and Harry Clarke have had to be really patient and trained well.

“Certainly, those two, they’re not so young any more, but young professionals who are outstanding every day in their training, in their application and they’re still improving all the time and they’re big assets to have as part of the group.

“But also they need game time in their development as well. So we’ll try and make the right decisions in January.

“As always, the right balance between what’s the best thing for each player, especially for our young players, but also making sure that we have enough strength in depth in the group because things can change really, really quickly, as much as we’ve had absolutely minimum injuries in the first half of the season. 

“We’ve seen before in previous seasons that they can often come in spades and all of a sudden you can have a large number in the space of a couple of fixtures, and then the group would be looking really different, and players who are on the outside at the moment would be having big roles to play. 

“We’ve got four games in nine days, so there are no thoughts for anyone at the moment other than everyone being ready to contribute and then we'll make the judgments after that.”

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