Coventry City representatives are in talks to try and extend the loan of Joe Cole from Aston Villa.
Talks are on-going with the Birmingham based club about Cole staying with the Sky Blues until January and speaking to the Coventry Telegraph's Andy Turner, Tony Mowbray said: “He’s had a chat with Villa, Mark Venus has had a chat with Villa and I think the best option at the moment is to take it to January, try to get him to a physical condition where he can play football matches for us and stop chasing games.
“That’s what he’s been doing, chasing games to play, which is what he’s done at Villa as well. He needs almost a mini pre-season and we have got an opportunity coming up when we have the weekend without a game due to being out of the FA Cup to do that; to physically work him to get his body more robust to deal with the demands of playing league games.
“He understands that he can’t just come and play and then break down because it doesn’t work for us financially at all, and it doesn’t work for Joe either because he doesn’t want to sit around and not play.
“I’m not saying he’s going to play three games a week but, certainly impact on the team more than he has, even though he scored a great goal for us the other week.
“I think he’s frustrated that he’s played 50-odd minutes here, 60 minutes there. He doesn’t have to play 90 minutes of every game because we have got a lot of other good young footballers who are trying to make their way in their careers and, in my view, just having him around the training ground with the likes of James Maddison has been beneficial.
“They’ve trained together and Joe was telling me today how talented James looks and I said that hopefully he’ll enjoy training and playing with him somewhere along the line.
“It’s important that James has role models and who better than someone who has played 50-odd times for England and likes football and wants to be here.
“If I thought he was being a superstar and didn’t want to be here then he’d be going back. But I want to give him the opportunity to play and impress everyone because he has got amazing talent. We just need to get his body stronger."