.....is that despite their relative youth, they've both already played more than 200 senior games each. Suggests that neither of them miss that many games through injury, and that they're absolutely capable of playing "misters' football", even if it's at lower than second tier level.
Hecky mentioned something about MacDonald playing so many games when he first signed despite his age. Think we look for the young and unproven lower league players but they have to have had played consistently at that level.
That seems to be something that we look to. Hourihane, Winnall and Scowen had all played a lot of games when we signed them, if I remember correctly.
I don't recall Hourihane missing many whilst he was with us, incredible when you consider the energy he plays with.
Villa have just signed another CM. young lad, very highly rated by Tottenham. Sounds like one of those "must play" deals. Tottenham turned down lots of requests to loan him out earlier. So Hourihane, Lansbury, Whelan, Jedinak, Bjarnason, Gardner and Josh Onomah competing in the centre.... .... I hope they ******* combust (sorry James and Conor). But Id have Conor back if he fancied it on loan!
They play with 3 CM's and they want rid of Gardner so that leaves 6 midfielders for 3 positions, which is significantly less than our 7 for 2 positions.
My point was more that I wonder how many games Conor will play. Seeing as he's on £28k and Lansbury on £50k a week think we're probably spending less on our combined 7 than 1 of their 7. I was only including their main CMs. They have others that can play there as well.
I get what you mean but I don't think Conor ever expected to go there and be the centre of the team like he was here.