Conor Hourihane

The Irish Beckham, what a left foot and delivery this lad has, will be a big assets for us going forward. Some of his free kicks are a joke, very hard to defend against.

Left peg wonder. Can deliver an excellent piece, buts really the height of it. Rory Delap stuff. Doesn’t have much control over the game from midfield either, if he could improve that side of his game. He’d be comfortable top flight footballer.

Edited by Olaf - 21 Jul 2020 at 11:40pm

Left foot wrote: Set pieces are consistantly world class, but he's a championship player.  We've all seen too many games in which he dissappears for 15/20 minutes. I think at 28 he's now playing his best football.

Edited by Fruice - 22 Jul 2020 at 12:14am

Conor has only a year left on his contract. Given his contribution to the team this season in appearances, goals and assists, you would expect them to extend it. They are stuck with some wooden ones with three years left on their contracts who will probably still be with the club in whatever division they are in come 2024 as they will be well nigh impossible to offload, at least without heavy losses. On the plus side, they have got rid of the recruitment director responsible for their catastrophic recruitment strategy and they don't have to sell Grealish, as he is one of those with three years left on his contract. They can either price him out of the market or sell him for really silly money that could then be used to reshape the squad.

What's missing is speed. He doesn't have that quickness of movement to influence the game when he's put under pressure. It's the reason why he looks so good from set pieces/when he's given space, because he has the time to actually steady himself and use his quality.

I have to agree regarding his contribution in open play. he would seem to have all the attributes of a really good number 10, but he just goes missing far too often and doesn't nit together a teams offensive play like you wish you would.

JoxerDaly wrote: Had a hand in nearly every one of there last 5 or 6 goals, one of the main reasons Villa stayed up, if he can get up to speed next year regards his overall involvement in the game he could become a very impotent player for us. His delivery is different class, can't remember the last time we had someone who could whip a ball in as good.

Conor can come up with moments of magic in a game which can score goals and win you matches via his set pieces and ball striking, but the problem is he goes missing for large parts of the games and you have to decide is he worth keeping on the pitch for these moments. You would think that if he played in a midfield trio with two more combative/mobile players it would be worth keeping him there. The problem for us has been both himself and Hendrick have gone missing when they are played together, hopefully Kenny can change that or someone like Molumby can come in and shake up the midfield.

Poor game today... set pieces were poor too....