Birmingham City manager Lee Bowyer has admitted that the club have already received interest from elsewhere for Caolan Boyd-Munce ahead of the January window.

The 21-year-old has struggled to make inroads on the Blues' starting eleven after joining the club's academy in 2016.

Since being handed his debut during a League Cup clash with Portsmouth in 2019, Boyd-Munce has only managed to make eight more appearances at senior level for the club.

Currently being utilised exclusively by Birmingham at Under-23 level, the midfielder has featured on 11 occasions in the Premier League 2 Division 2 this season.

Despite the fact that the Blues were recently unable to call upon the services of Gary Gardner and Ryan Woods due to suspension, Boyd-Munce was not included in the club's match-day squads for their clashes with Blackpool, Millwall and Cardiff City.

Making reference to Boyd-Munce's current situation at Birmingham, Bowyer has revealed that discussions are already taking place at St Andrew's regarding the possibility of the midfielder making a temporary move to another club next month.

Speaking in his pre-match press conference for the Blues' meeting with Blackburn Rovers on Saturday (as cited by the Birmingham Mail) about the Northern Ireland Under-21 international, Bowyer said: "There is interest in him, I know there is interest in someone to take him on loan so that would be a discussion between the club and the team that is interested and obviously the player and his agent.

"There is definitely conversations going on already about that."

The Verdict

When you consider that Boyd-Munce has recently been overtaken in the pecking order by Jordan James, he may find it difficult to force his way into Bowyer's side if he stays at Birmingham next month.

Therefore, instead of continuing to use the midfielder as part of their Under-23 set-up, the Blues should indeed be looking into the possibility of loaning him out to a team in a lower division.

Providing that Boyd-Munce is able to feature regularly for another club in the second-half of the 2021/22 campaign, he may make considerable strides in terms of his development.

This will then put him in good stead for when he eventually returns to St Andrew's next summer.