Coventry City must be considering new Brighton & Hove Albion transfer agreement | OneFootball

Coventry City have had an outstanding start to the season, and one of their most outstanding performers has been loanee goalkeeper Carl Rushworth.

Coventry City have had an outstanding start to the 2025-26 season, and they will be keener than ever to hang on to a loanee who's been among their most outstanding performers.

The wins keep coming. A 2-1 win at Fratton Park against Portsmouth kept Coventry City top of the Championship table on Tuesday night, another potentially tricky away trip successfully overcome as Frank Lampard's team continues their chase for a return to the Premier League for the first time since 2001.

Coventry are now the only remaining unbeaten team in the Championship, with seven wins and four draws from their first eleven League matches of the season. They're a point clear at the top of the table, and have shown few signs of slowing up as the evenings have started to draw in.

One of their key players already this season has been a player who only arrived at the club on loan in the summer, but such have been the quality of his performances that they will surely be looking to make his move permanent, if they can find a way of persuading his parent club to allow it.

Carl Rushworth only arrived at Coventry City because of a serious injury

One of Coventry's stand-out performers so far this season has been new goalkeeper Carl Rushworth, but had things gone slightly differently before his arrival, things might have gone somewhat differently.

Rushworth arrived at the CBS Arena in no small part thanks to a serious injury to Coventry's normal first-choice goalkeeper Oliver Dovin. Dovin was stretchered off with an ACL injury during the Sky Blues' match at Sheffield United at the start of April, an injury which has kept him on the sidelines ever since.

Bradley Collins took over in goal for the rest of Coventry's season. They finished in fifth place in the Championship, securing themselves a play-off place, but were heart-breakingly beaten at the very last in the play-off semi-finals by Sunderland. But Collins couldn't establish himself as the Sky Blues' new first-choice goalkeeper. He was loaned out to Burton Albion in August, and no small part of the reason for this was the arrival of Rushworth.

Carl Rushworth has been a revelation in goal for the Sky Blues this season

If nothing else, Carl Rushworth will certainly be used to being sent out on loan by now. Signed by Brighton & Hove Albion in 2019 from non-league Halifax Town, Coventry are the sixth club he's been sent out to, having previously spent time at Worthing, Walsall, Lincoln City, Swansea City and Hull City, without having made a single League appearance for his parent club.

He only made two appearances last season for Hull, but he's been a revelation so far at the CBS Arena. He's started every League game in goal for them, and the eight goals that he's conceded in eleven games is the second-lowest in the division, including no less than six clean sheets.

Things have been difficult for Oliver Dovin. He admitted as much in an interview with Coventry Live in September. But football is an unsentimental business, and he may find it very hard work indeed to get his place back in goal for Coventry, given Rushworth's form so far this season.

Frank Lampard will surely have had his head turned by Rushworth's form, and there are no guarantees of what condition Dovin will be in by the time of his return, or whether he'll be able to rediscover the form that made him their first-choice goalkeeper in the first place. With all of this in mind, it would make perfect sense for Coventry to sound out Brighton about the possibility of making his move permanent, either in the January transfer window or next summer.

There are many moving parts to this decision. Coventry could be a Premier League club by the end of this season. Brighton might have secured European football, which would require a bigger squad of players and more back-ups. Dovin should be back to full fitness by then.

But if Rushworth can continue the form that he's shown over the first three months of his sixth loan spell since joining Brighton, it will give the Coventry manager plenty of food for thought. If a reasonable price can be agreed and Rushworth is amenable to severing his Brighton ties after almost seven years, making this loan transfer a permanent one could be just what's needed at a club who have been making all the right moves since the start of the 2025-26 season.