Stoke City boss Mark Robins has been using Lewis Koumas on loan from Liverpool.
Lewis Koumas spent the 2024/25 season on loan at Stoke from Liverpool.(Image: Ashley Crowden/REX/Shutterstock)
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Lewis Koumas is catching eyes and winning new plaudits in a season when his career seems to have taken a leap for club and country.
Koumas got his first taste of regular senior football when he joined Stoke City on loan from Liverpool after two games of the 2024/25 season. He appeared in 43 of the remaining 44 matches and scored three times, setting up another two, and gave a glimpse of his potential as well as the challenges that often come with a first loan in a struggling team.
He didn't pull up any trees at Birmingham City in another loan in the first half of the following season but then played a supporting role in the second half for a Hull side that won promotion through the play-offs.
Now aged 21, there were expectations that he would probably head out on loan again but new Liverpool manager Andoni Iraola saw enough in pre-season to keep him at Anfield. He has since made his Premier League debut and featured six times in all, while particularly impressing in his 13th and 14th caps for Wales.
Koumas showed that he "is ready to be the man Wales can depend on" after his performance against Portugal last Thursday, according to the BBC. They added: "His work-rate was contagious, and his quality on the ball appears significantly advanced to what it was even just a year or so ago."
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Wales manager Craig Bellamy said: "The positive part is you expose one or two players to this moment, I remember doing it about two years ago in Turkey with Koumas. I thought he was outstanding and I'm thinking, 'he belongs here'.
"They kept him on at Anfield. You don't get the choice to stay. If they want to keep you, they keep you. It's a difference."
Rob Earnshaw, the Wales striker turned pundit, picked out three attributes that made Koumas stand out.
He said: "What I loved was his energy, his willingness and fearlessness to say I am going to run, I am going to press. You could just see the moments that could turn into chances and goals for him. I see high potential in him."
Former Liverpool midfielder Danny Murphy used Phil Foden as an example regarding the dilemma Liverpool will have had about keeping him in house or sending him back out on loan.
"In time he might not get as much game time, we'll have to wait and see, but the experience he's getting from being around quality players helps," Murphy said via WalesOnline.
"Remember the argument years ago with Foden? Foden was a superstar kid, and there was talk he shouldn't go out on loan.
"Loans are beneficial, of course, but maybe right now, being around the quality Liverpool have might help him more than playing somewhere else. It's great news for Wales as well."
He added: "I also think it's really healthy for any club to have one or two young lads in and around it who are learning and connecting with the fans, because Liverpool for a long time have always had local lads or lads from the Academy coming through who understand what the club means, which he does."
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