It’s a summer of uncertainty for Conor Hourihane as he looks set for an Aston Villa exit but his options are not as wide as you would expect for a player who arrived earlier this year in Swansea as the man to make a difference and left as a huge disappointment for us.<\/p>\n
He has been linked with a move to Sheffield United but nothing is concrete and there are a few rumblings but nothing more it seems than the usual “try and drum up interest” in a player who is in the last year of a contract and facing an uncertain future.<\/p>\n
It was so different twelve months ago as he started both of Villa’s opening Premier League games last season but they signed Ross Barkley, beat Liverpool 7-2 at Villa Park and it was never the same for the Irish international again.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019d played two, won two, and Conor had come off in both games. We signed Ross (Barkley), and I felt we needed to go a different way against Liverpool, given who we were playing against,” said manager Dean Smith<\/p>\n
“I explained that to Conor, and, yes, he was disappointed because he had been involved in the first two games, but we felt we\u2019d brought in a real, high-calibre, different type of player.\u201d<\/p>\n
With his time on the pitch at Villa limited at best a January move was welcomed and when the chance to join Swansea came around, Hourihane jumped on it and signed up at the Liberty as we looked to push on for a place in the Premier League.<\/p>\n
The signing, for us, was designed to be a pivotal point in the season.\u00a0 In fairness, that is what it proved to be but possibly not in the way that any of us envisaged back in January when he put pen to paper.\u00a0 Quite simply, he was a man who never lived up to expectation and certainly never gave us what we hoped.<\/p>\n
The words he delivered shortly after signing excited everyone \u201cI am desperate to play, I could have sat around at\u00a0Villa<\/span>\u00a0for the rest of the season, but I want to play. I hope I can bring some experience as I have had a couple of promotions in my career,\u201d he told the official site after one of his early training sessions.<\/p>\n \u201cBut I want to add quality too, in terms of goals and assists my numbers have been pretty good in seasons where I have played, so I hope I can bring that here.<\/p>\n \u201cThe lads have put themselves in a great position, it\u2019s going to be a fantastic run-in and I hope I can help them along over the second half of the season and achieve what we all want to achieve.<\/p>\n \u201cI am excited by the challenge, and I want to come down here and achieve.<\/p>\n \u201cI wanted to get out there and have another challenge, I want to be part of something. I want to cement the side high up the table and try and provide a bit extra over the rest of the season.\u201d<\/p>\n It all sounded good and the early signs were even better as Hourihane added goals, assists and a dead ball option that we didn\u2019t have available.\u00a0 \u00a0Even Matt Grimes was back amongst the goals as Hourihane\u2019s presence gave him extra space in the midfield and it looked as if this could be the signing that propelled us towards the Premier League.<\/p>\n But that was as good as it got in those early weeks.\u00a0 \u00a0I maintain a belief that Hourihane would have been better in a Sigurdsson type role but that role simply didn\u2019t have a place in a Steve Cooper side.\u00a0 \u00a0He took up a spot in midfield where he was no better than the other options we had available.\u00a0 In fact you could argue he was worse as his work rate was not there and the midfield was becoming lightweight and this was exposing the backline.<\/p>\n Cooper was in a dilemma.\u00a0 \u00a0He simply couldn\u2019t \u2013 or at least didn\u2019t want to \u2013 drop Hourihane.\u00a0 \u00a0He had signed him for the club on good money and whether he wasn\u2019t allowed to or maybe he didn\u2019t want to lose face but he persisted in picking him.\u00a0 \u00a0And every time he picked him he seemed to try and make changes around the rest of the team to see if he could get the lucky solution he stumbled across last season when he tried a wing back formation.<\/p>\n It didn\u2019t happen though.\u00a0 Hourihane\u2019s performances were going backwards, the assists, the goals and even the set plays had dried up and the Swans were weaker for it.\u00a0 \u00a0We could all see that he needed dropping bit it wasn\u2019t happening.\u00a0 There were players on the sidelines and the bench who deserved a chance but they weren\u2019t getting it, Cooper was reluctant to drop the man he pinned his hopes on and that meant he was fast running out of options.\u00a0 \u00a0Given he was always playing Lowe, Ayew and Grimes as well there wasn\u2019t much rotation and the likes of Routledge, Smith, Cullen and others were sidelined and left with the occasional performance.<\/p>\n Through no fault of his own Hourihane had upset the balance of the team and the man signed to drive us onto promotion was having the opposite effect as Cooper tried to shoehorn him into a side that simply he didn\u2019t fit into.<\/p>\n Hourihane is a better player than Swansea City saw.\u00a0 I have little doubt of that.\u00a0 However he needs to be a player in the right team playing the right style where he can be in the right position.\u00a0 At Swansea City that wasn\u2019t for him, wrong style, wrong position and wrong formation.\u00a0 \u00a0In hindsight maybe we could have seen it in January before he signed but we didn\u2019t.<\/p>\n It was a shame given the investment in him but whilst Morgan Gibbs-White was an example of Cooper finding the right player, Hourihane was an example of him finding the completely wrong one but seemingly too stubborn to accept it.<\/p>\n In the play off semi finals against Barnsley a glance at the Barnsley forums and social media accounts told you what you needed to know – Hourihane was a shadow of the player they had seen on loan and it is always sad to see a good player become the player mentioned with statements like that.<\/p>\n At 30 years old there is time left in his career.\u00a0 \u00a0He remains an international footballer and there could be a major finals in him but a move from Villa is essential and he has to get back the form that I think he is more than capable of.\u00a0 \u00a0The move to Swansea was not good for him or us but with the right move to the right club, there could be some good things to come from Conor just yet.\u00a0 Maybe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It’s a summer of uncertainty for Conor Hourihane as he looks set for an Aston Villa exit but his options are not as wide as you would expect for a player who arrived earlier this year in Swansea as the man to make a difference and left as a huge disappointment for us. He has […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"cybocfi_hide_featured_image":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[293,49,203],"tags":[356,608],"class_list":["post-44739","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-first-team","category-news","category-opinion","tag-conor-hourihane","tag-the-2021-22-season"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44739","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44739"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44739\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44739"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44739"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44739"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}