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Conor Hourihane


dont_do_it_doug.

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Except for the Spurs game Hourihane hasn't started against any of the stronger teams so it's hard for his better performances to come against them. In the league he's started four games and of those we've lost one, drawn one and won two, we've also won all three games that he's started in the league cup, two of those against premier league opposition. When you have a player that's started in five of your six wins then he really deserves to be starting games.

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2 hours ago, useless said:

Except for the Spurs game Hourihane hasn't started against any of the stronger teams so it's hard for his better performances to come against them. In the league he's started four games and of those we've lost one, drawn one and won two, we've also won all three games that he's started in the league cup, two of those against premier league opposition. When you have a player that's started in five of your six wins then he really deserves to be starting games.

Again, those were all against weaker opposition, the to PL teams in the cup being Brighton's U23's and Wolves' reserves respectively. He's good to have in those games as we're generally on top and his qualities become useful.

But in situations where it's more 50/50 or we're the underdogs, he becomes a passenger. He's slow both in thought and in physical speed and is closed down and dispossessed very quickly by the better players. The benefits he brings to games then become outweighed by these negatives. In those situations it's much better have Douglas or even Lansbury who can shift the ball quickly even though they're not the most physically gifted either. His set piece delivery is certainly missed though.

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17 minutes ago, Keyblade said:

Again, those were all against weaker opposition, the to PL teams in the cup being Brighton's U23's and Wolves' reserves respectively. He's good to have in those games as we're generally on top and his qualities become useful.

But in situations where it's more 50/50 or we're the underdogs, he becomes a passenger. He's slow both in thought and in physical speed and is closed down and dispossessed very quickly by the better players. The benefits he brings to games then become outweighed by these negatives. In those situations it's much better have Douglas or even Lansbury who can shift the ball quickly even though they're not the most physically gifted either. His set piece delivery is certainly missed though.

Is Douglas really that much better than Hourihane,? Idk, I've been seeing a lot of praise for him(before the latest game) but I don't feel like he's actually contributed much to the team beyond the long shots he's scored. His passing range doesn't seem to be all that useful to us with how deep he's usually seated and defensively, he isn't very good either. I can count at least 3 times this season where a Luiz mistake directly led to a goal we've conceded. I think Luiz can be labelled as a passenger as well in a lot of games and I think Hourihane still contributes more to the team in any situation than Luiz does, having arguably the second best long shot in the team after Luiz, easily our most dangerous set-piece specialist and one of our biggest goal threats in open play.

 

Edited by Laughable Chimp
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They might have been against weaker sides, but he still started to five of our six wins this season so to dismiss those victories just because of the opposition, is pretty much dismissing anything good that we've achieved this season, because if you take away the wins against Norwich and Burnley that leaves us with just five points. And no way should Lansbury a player who's done nothing in nearly three years at the club, be ahead of him, astounds me that people still think that.

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12 minutes ago, useless said:

They might have been against weaker sides, but he still started to five of our six wins this season so to dismiss those victories just because of the opposition, is pretty much dismissing anything good that we've achieved this season, because if you take away the wins against Norwich and Burnley that leaves us with just five points. And no way should Lansbury a player who's done nothing in nearly three years at the club, be ahead of him, astounds me that people still think that.

Correlation =/= causation. It's not like he put in match-winning displays to get us the wins. He was 1 of 11. You make it seem like we won those games because of Conor. We won because of good team displays, against weaker opposition, incidentally where Conor thrives which contributed to our good performances. It's no coincidence he played the particular games he has and sat out the others.

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20 minutes ago, Laughable Chimp said:

Is Douglas really that much better than Hourihane,? Idk, I've been seeing a lot of praise for him(before the latest game) but I don't feel like he's actually contributed much to the team beyond the long shots he's scored. His passing range doesn't seem to be all that useful to us with how deep he's usually seated and defensively, he isn't very good either. I can count at least 3 times this season where a Luiz mistake directly led to a goal we've conceded. I think Luiz can be labelled as a passenger as well in a lot of games and I think Hourihane still contributes more to the team in any situation than Luiz does, having arguably the second best long shot in the team after Luiz, easily our most dangerous set-piece specialist and one of our biggest goal threats in open play.

 

I've been disappointed by Douglas in recent games and he definitely seems to be as much of a passenger as Conor lately but the reasoning still stands and I'm sure it's how Dean picks his teams. 

For what it's worth, I'm definitely in favour of Douglas being dropped and Conor coming back in for Newcastle. He will be very useful, and on current form, Douglas is superfluous.

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He doesn't need to put in match winning displays to be worthy of a place in the team, if we applied that criteria to every player then we'd struggle to pick a team. Maybe it's about time we admitted that some of our players aren't quite as good as some like to think, and we can't really afford to be leaving someone like Hourihane, who at least provides goals and assists, out of the team.

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1 minute ago, useless said:

He doesn't need to put in match winning displays to be worthy of a place in the team, if we applied that criteria to every player then we'd struggle to pick a team. Maybe it's about time we admitted that some of our players aren't quite as good as some like to think, and we can't really afford to be leaving someone like Hourihane, who at least provides goals and assists, out of the team.

That isn't the point. Bringing up stats like "we won X number of games with him" means nothing, especially with such a small sample size unless he was the biggest reason we won those games in the first place. It's a non sequitur. Football is more complex than just "Y player scores goals, so he should be in the team", otherwise teams would just be picked based on goal/assist tally. He plays some games and starts on the bench in others. It was always obvious this was going to be the case due to his limitations as a player and is the reason we signed 2 other players who play in the position he was playing.

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Of course it means something when he's started five of our only six wins of the season so far, not only did he play in those games but he also contributed goals and assists but also had a goal unfairly disallowed and won a penalty. We bought two players for the position he was playing because he was playing out of position, after Jedinak, Whelan and Bjarnasson were released we had no other defensvie midfielders.

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21 minutes ago, useless said:

Of course it means something when he's started five of our only six wins of the season so far, not only did he play in those games but he also contributed goals and assists but also had a goal unfairly disallowed and won a penalty. We bought two players for the position he was playing because he was playing out of position, after Jedinak, Whelan and Bjarnasson were released we had no other defensvie midfielders.

Nope, sorry...still doesn't mean anything. Again, correlation is not causation. Perhaps if there was no way we could have won those games without him (like Grealish against Brighton for example), which isn't the case. He scored the 4th goal of 5 against Norwich and we still won the game where his goal was disallowed. The penalty he won wasn't even converted so it's a moot point.

The 2 players signed in his position both start games ahead of him. Douglas in particular doesn't play as a defensive midfielder in our current system against the better teams and is currently ahead of him in the pecking order as he was signed to be.

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You could use the correlation not equalling causation line about any player, besides you don't need to prove that Hourihane is the cause of us winning games for him to be worthy of a place in the starting line-up. And again we didn't sign two players in his position we signed two DMs, Hourihane is not a DM, we didn't sign any players in his position because we already had Grealish and McGinn and Hourihane would have been seen as good enough back up especially considering all the money we had to spend elsewhere on the team, but now Grealish has moved out wide which opens up another place in the midfield. Also It's not his fault that the penalty wasn't converted, he still did well to have won it in the first place, dismissing that just smacks of playing down something good he's contributed for the sake of it.

Last three league games he's played in we've taken seven points, he's had a goal and an assist, won a penalty and had a goal unfairly disallowed, I'd say he can count himself very unlucky to have been dropped, and is deserving of a recall, he might not be an amazing player but neither is Luiz (yet), and Lansbury certainly isn't.

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3 minutes ago, useless said:

You could use the correlation not equalling causation line about any player, besides you don't need to prove that Hourihane is the cause of us winning games for him to be worthy of a place in the starting line-up. And again we didn't sign two players in his position we signed two DMs, Hourihane is not a DM, we didn't sign any players in his position because we already had Grealish and McGinn and Hourihane would have been seen as good enough back up especially considering all the money we had to spend elsewhere on the team, but now Grealish has moved out wide which opens up another place in the midfield. Also It's not his fault that the penalty wasn't converted, he still did well to have won it in the first place, dismissing that just smacks of playing down something good he's contributed for the sake of it.

Last three league games he's played in we've taken seven points, he's had a goal and an assist, won a penalty and had a goal unfairly disallowed, I'd say he can count himself very unlucky to have been dropped, and is deserving of a recall, he might not be an amazing player but neither is Luiz (yet), and Lansbury certainly isn't.

I don't think Luiz is a DM either......but thats just me.

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As has been said a thousand times already he's not a traditional DM, he's more what many people these days call a 'quarterback', I think he was brought to do a similar job for us as what Ryan Woods was doing for Smith at Brentford, but we're not yet good enough to play with someone like Luiz in our DM position as we don't keep the ball well enough. In the mean time hopefully he can do well enough in a more advanced position.

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20 minutes ago, useless said:

You could use the correlation not equalling causation line about any player, besides you don't need to prove that Hourihane is the cause of us winning games for him to be worthy of a place in the starting line-up. And again we didn't sign two players in his position we signed two DMs, Hourihane is not a DM, we didn't sign any players in his position because we already had Grealish and McGinn and Hourihane would have been seen as good enough back up especially considering all the money we had to spend elsewhere on the team, but now Grealish has moved out wide which opens up another place in the midfield. Also It's not his fault that the penalty wasn't converted, he still did well to have won it in the first place, dismissing that just smacks of playing down something good he's contributed for the sake of it.

Last three league games he's played in we've taken seven points, he's had a goal and an assist, won a penalty and had a goal unfairly disallowed, I'd say he can count himself very unlucky to have been dropped, and is deserving of a recall, he might not be an amazing player but neither is Luiz (yet), and Lansbury certainly isn't.

Well you made the connection, not me. I think he should come in against Newcastle, but saying he should start every game because we won 5 out of 6 games that he started is just nonsense, that's all. We would have won against Crewe, Norwich, Brighton x2 and Wolves without him. It's like saying we shouldn't have started Grealish earlier in the season because we lost the last 20+ games that he played in the PL. Yeah sure that's true, but it obviously doesn't tell the full story. Football is more complex than just looking at a set of numbers. Statistics without context can justify any position, even seemingly contradictory ones.

 

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I wasn't the one to bring anything up about 'causality' nor did I suggest that he was the cause for us winning games, just pointing out the fact that he's started all but one of our six wins this season. I also never said he should start all our games.

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27 minutes ago, useless said:

I wasn't the one to bring anything up about 'causality' nor did I suggest that he was the cause for us winning games, just pointing out the fact that he's started all but one of our six wins this season. I also never said he should start all our games.

What purpose does pointing out the fact that he started 5/6 of our wins this season serve? If you were just pointing out an interesting coincidence then apologies for misunderstanding, but it sounded like you were using that statistic to justify his place in the starting XI.

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As it happens it is a pretty good argument for him starting games, he's done well and the team has done well when he's started, the idea of not changing a winning side is quite a common concept in football, it's not as if the team or the players replacing him have done particulary better when he's not played. It's not just those stats anyway, he's more likely than most in our squad to provide an assist or a goal, and we need all the help we can get in that regard.

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