Conor Hourihane

Should easily get a 2 year deal with a low budget Championship team like Blackpool or even Luton.

Can't see him taking over a 60% reduction on his wages to join Blackpool or Luton. Blackpool's highest earner is supposedly on 7.6k and Luton's 9.2k.

Hourihane is on 30k at Villa and while he's not getting that with his next contract he'll probably want at least double what Luton are paying.

Linked with a possible move to West Brom.

J89 wrote:

Linked with a possible move to West Brom.

hes only 31 thought he was more.

I love beer gardens

Hourihane may well end up at a bottom of the championship type team.

You Tell Me wrote:

Was apparently ready to sign for Derby before the previous ownership bid broke down and Rooney quit, but probably not going to happen now.

I know we have selected League 1 players in the last couple of years but more recently it has generally been younger up and coming ones, the likes of Horgan and Curtis seem to have been sidelined now. Wonder would the same thing happen to Hourihane if he dropped to that level. To be honest his performances in the last year have been League 1 standard.

If he'd have been playing in League 1 over the last few years he probably still would've been selected for sheer lack of options in CM.

But the fact that he hasn't started a competitive game for Ireland since Bulgaria in November 2020, while playing for promotion pushing sides like Swansea & Sheffield United, means the writing is on the wall. Dropping down to League 1 now, pushing 32, would surely mean he's unlikely to play a part in the Euro24 campaign.

This depends on other players pushing him out too though.

Smallbone linked with a loan to Forest, if it goes through & he's playing regularly enough then he'd be impossible for Kenny to ignore. He'd actually be our only PL midfielder (unless Knight or Cullen get a PL move). But even a good Championship loan should get him in ahead of Hourihane.

Kilkenny linked with Boro. He actually didn't play that much less than Hourihane last season (1459 minutes vs 1626 for Hourihane. And a lot of Hourihanes starts came when Fleck was out with his medical issue). If Kilkenny is playing regularly for Boro, top end of the Champ, then he can't be passed over for Hourihane.

Coventry, similar story, will surely have a crack at the Championship. If he's playing well & regularly he'll be pushing ahead of Hourihane.

For Hourihane, maybe a team like Wigan would pick him up? He'd be a good squad option for them, loads of experience, can still do a job in the Champ, could help them stay up.

At different stages it looked like himself or Hendrick could be a source of goals from midfield for us with breaking runs into the box, second balls, or long-range efforts; set pieces too in the case of Hourihane. Shame it never materialised.

The lack of someone who can whip in an accurate set-piece at pace has been severely missing for us in the Kenny regime.

I believe we've scored far fewer goals as a result.

Witness how much better our set-piece got when we switched from Cullen/Coleman to McClean (hardly well-known for set-pieces, but an improvement).

Having one person on the team who is truly excellent at set-pieces is something we should aim for, particularly given how highly they feature in our goal-chances.

Am always puzzled by how little consideration Irish management give to the delivery of set-pieces (generally poor if Hourihane or Brady not doing it), as opposed to the actual receipt (Duffy, Egan, Collins etc - we're doing very well there)

In terms of ability at least, Hourihane seems to be that man.

Odd we have no one who can really hit a set-piece, other than Hourihane. There were times when you'd have three outstanding set-piece takers in our 11 (e.g.: Irwin, Staunton, Harte).

Can't think of any young lads coming through that can whip it in - maybe James Furlong, seemed to have a good delivery in the U17 or U19 Euros a few years back.

Hourihane's set pieces have been hopeless for us in the last while though. He's as reliable as Ronaldo for hitting the ball straight into the first defender these days.