Hourihane

Cannot argue with his great early season form. Scored some stunning goals and created quite a few others. However, since mid November his form has dropped off remarkably. His shooting has been poor, his passes have gone astray and his general contribution to the team in terms of work rate has been abysmal. The lad has talent without doubt. That should not mean he is unstoppable. His confidence seems very low at the moment and he has been a passenger in many games, particularly away. We just cannot afford to carry passengers, we aren't good enough. I honestly think leaving him out for 2 or 3 games & making him fight for his place would benefit everyone.

 

Should say undroppable not unstoppable.... bloody predictive text.

 

Some crunching tackles in that video

 

After his early season form teams started to double up on him when he was anywhere near their area and thus snub out his shooting threat since that time Danny as a whole has had us defensive minded in games and this is where Conor seems lacking, however, he does seem to be working on that side of his game, and whilst it aint obvious every week, he has gone from being a player who would slide into a tackle early season and then get up and watch the action unfold whilst strolling back to a player who at least is trying to get goal side of a player and help out his team mates.

If he sees the commitment from Pearson and Scowan and the work rate from them after a misplaced pass to regain possession and takes it on board he can only become a more all rounded midfielder.

As for dropping him, no he is our dead ball man and one who has given us something this season we haven`t had in a long time.

 

I don't think he should be 'dropped' but there could be an argument for resting him, he's being flogged by playing every minute of every game, it may be the cause of his current form. I'd also like to see him taken off at times when he's clearly struggling, Saturday's match a case in point, he was having a poor game but when it came to bringing Scowen on we shuffled our whole mf to keep him on rather than a straight swap.

I do rate CH highly though.

 

The pro-Hourihane camp conveniently ignores the fact he's been mediocre (and not just by his standards) for the last couple of months. The anti-Hourihane camp play too heavily on recent form and don't recognise the fact that he is obviously a very talented young lad, and even if he has a crap game he can always pop up with something special (like he almost did away at Preston).

It doesn't have to be so black or white - I see it somewhere in the middle. I like him but I'm not going to stick my fingers in my ears and shout "la la la la I can't hear you" if someone says he's been a bit **** for the last few weeks because, let's be reyt, he's not been great. Now we have Scowen and Pearson (if we can extend) I'd give him a rest for a game or 2 and explain that it's not because he's crap, it's because he's looked a bit off the pace (which is understandable given the number of minutes he has played).

I think he just needs a short break so that he can come back refreshed to help us kick on.

 

That is all far too sensible for my liking

 

Very well reasoned post, mate. Speaking for myself, had others adopted such a stance, perhaps mine would also have reciprocated. But when that isn't the case, I make no apologies for making my stand with a lad who I truly believe has been an excellent purchase for us against some, in my opinion, astonishingly OTT criticism of him.

 

Well said.

He obviously has it in him to be a worthy player, but it has been hidden for 2 months or more.

The trick is to bring it out again, somehow or other, if possible. Having him play on regardless has not worked as yet.

 

they will always need to find a whipping boy

and you know the names I am thinking about... good results and they cannot hang the manager....so they have to look at other areas to satiate their desires. Sad really. We have senior players coming back , some of our missing young ones coming back. We have made some good additions to the squad in the transfer window and let go some of those that did not make the mark... we are currently 13th and just 4 points from the Play-Off zone... THIS IS JUST NOT GOOD ENOUGH IS IT!!! We should demand Europe in 5 years or else!!

 

Re: they will always need to find a whipping boy

It's all just been a ploy so that he wasn't sold during the window. He'll be back on form now, you watch

 

I will sift through footage next time and include tackles too. FFS.

 

No one is undroppable the problem we have is we lack any player capable of scoring or creating goals other than CH. The entire rest of our midfield has 2 league goals all season and probably won't improve much on that. We have quite a lot of midfielders but few genuinely creative ones who are not in even worse form than CH.

 

If you ever do a Ross Turnbull one I demand you put all the goals he scores in it otherwise it will prove the that he is rubbish...

 

Thing is, JC, all I'm doing is updating his video as we go along. I could painstakingly take the piss and sift through every piece of footage out there and make a 60 minute video of good, bad or ugly stuff. But I haven't, because it'd take me hours on end. I've merely used the obvious highlights, and added a couple of goal-line clearances to show him defending. Folk have already responded to that as I knew they would by suggesting if he's on a post he should clear it etc. However, I remember Jim O'Brien getting grief on here last season for not managing just that.

Next time I've 'time' and can be arsed, I'll definitely add about ten tackles/headers too. I won't be adding clips of him losing the ball or giving it away though, because I'm a BFC supporter and don't think we supporters want to see that in these kinds of videos, do we? I mean, I did a Mellis video a year or so ago, a Paddy one, an O'Grady one, I only included good things in those too.

I'm looking forward to updating both his and Winnall's as we go along. The only other players I could squeeze a short video out of would be Turnbull and Nyatanga, at a push, possibly Ramage.

As I say in my descriptions of the videos (sometimes), they're not for profit, not to gain millions of views or owt, they're for entertainment purposes, for reds fans, but mainly, for myself. Just as the blogs are. Summat to look back on.

I always link this video, and no apologies for doing so again, but I'm glad I created this as it's nice now to look back on that remarkable season, two years later. I hope to one day be looking back on Conor's video in similar fashion.


You Reds.




The Great Escape:

[video=youtube;urMz1f3i00s]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=urMz1f3i00s[/video]

 

Crainie would be a good shout, especially when at right back, looks like this upcoming John Stones fella

 

I'll leave others to do that. Trust me, it was hard work making the Bobby Hassell video, and I had ten years to go on for that one. Defenders are hard to cover as highlight videos etc don't tend to focus on tackles/headers etc.

Asking me to do one on Cranie is like asking me to do one on Dave Regis..

 

Still don't understand the CH bashing, he's a game winner and what we've been crying out for ever since Brian Howard left the club. Connor's job isn't to be lunging in for tackles or chasing every single ball down, we've got Scowen and Pearson for that... put Connor just behind two strikers up front and we're laughing.

 

Cheers Whitey