Siriki Dembele has given Gary Rowett a selection headache ahead of Birmingham City’s crunch clash with Huddersfield Town after upping his game on the training ground.
The enigmatic winger has only started once in Blues’ last 14 matches and Rowett has overlooked him in his six-game tenure. But Dembele, 27, has forced his way back into Rowett’s thinking over the past two weeks with improved showings in training and he impressed off the bench in the draw with Rotherham United last time out.
“I think he’s the sort of player that can open a game up, he’s the sort of player who can show quality like you saw earlier in the season, I think the challenge for any player like that is to find the consistent balance to stay in the team and play lots of games so you can affect the game,” said Rowett.
“That’s any player’s challenge at the moment. I don’t think we’ve had such outstanding performances that people stay in the team every game, but at the same time you are trying to find that level of trust, quality and balance all the time - the Yin and the Yang.
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“In the last week he has certainly shown a better appetite to show me in training what he’s about. That should be every player all the time and then, like I said before, if I’m the manager and I don’t pick him then it’s not his fault.
“If a player leaves me in a situation where that’s an easy decision then that’s where it is but he’s definitely improved and showed what he’s got, and he’s probably made selection a little bit harder for the weekend.”
Huddersfield’s defenders know all about Dembele’s quality. The Ivorian was the toast of Birmingham in early October after his electric display and brace helped Blues down the Terriers 4-1 on home soil. However, Rowett won’t be picking Dembele on the strength of a performance from almost seven months ago.
The interim Blues boss added: “It’s sometimes easy to watch that and watch a player up against a direct opponent and see the influence, but I think that takes away so many different things. It takes away form, it takes away training, it takes away the team dynamic. As you go along a season, all those things shift and change all the time.
“I could justify for every single player at one game in the season where they were so outstanding that I could pick them on the back of that. What you have to try and do is look at the actual magnitude of the game and see what you think is required.
“After Rotherham, you could see we missed Koji (Miyoshi) at times in different ways - and that was my decision - and we maybe missed those types of players but we scored three goals against Coventry without those players, so you’re just trying to find the balance.”
