Coventry City added young striker Tavares to their ranks almost two years ago now, bringing him in from Rochdale in winter 2021. The majority of the Portuguese talent’s game time has come in the Sky Blues’ youth setup, with 18 senior appearances yielding one goal.

Tavares has had a long spell out through injury and only recently returned. But, at 22, the general feeling is that he needs regular first-team chances.

For that reason, he could benefit from a winter loan, and it seems it’s under consideration. Coventry City boss Robins has told Coventry Live that while he has been on the comeback trail for much of 2023, he feels Tavares needs to play and the chances of him heading out on loan to do so are ‘fairly high’.

“He will be around training, but he’s been out for almost 12 months, similar to Callum [O’Hare],” Robins said.

“Fabio was still trying to break into the side at the stage where he got injured. That set him back and we’ll look to see what we’re going to do with him, but he’ll be playing in the under-21s again today.

“But he needs to play, so the chances of him going out on loan are fairly high in January. These are the conversations that we’re having at the moment so that’s where we’re at with Fabio.

“There’s been no hard and fast decision been made but with that in my mind, that may be where that leads to. Fabio is aware of that and we’ll just see how he goes and see how he accelerates.”

For the meantime, the focus will be on managing Tavares’ workload in training and competitive minutes while he steps up his return from a long-term achilles injury. Ahead of January though, it does seem like a temporary move will be best for his development.

He got a decent amount of experience with Rochdale before his Coventry City switch but as touched on before, at 22, the time has come for him to be playing the senior game week in, week out.