Newcastle United struggled badly without Jonjo Shelvey in the starting XI and the Barnsley midfielder could have replaced him perfectly.
Jonjo Shelvey’s importance to Newcastle United was never in question. In fact, with the season just a few months old, the six-time England international looked a shoe-in for Player of the Year, producing some of the finest midfield performances ever seen in the second tier.
However, his five game suspension after the festive period made emphatically clear just how important he was to the fortunes of Rafa Benitez’s side. Indispensable, essentially. Therefore, the Daily Mail’s claims that Newcastle had tracked Barnsley’s Conor Hourihane make sense. That they allowed Aston Villa to steal a march and enter advanced negotiations; less so.
The Magpies lost two of their four Championship fixtures without Shelvey pulling the strings in the midfield, failing to score against both Sheffield Wednesday and Blackburn Rovers while the grit of Jack Colback and Isaac Hayden failed to compensate for the absence of guile.
However, Hourihane is arguably the closest entity to Shelvey in the Championship. A deep lying playmaker with a penchant for show-stopping wondergoals, the Barnsley captain has scored six and assisted a league-leading 11 in a truly remarkable campaign.
Therefore, he would surely replicate Shelvey’s creativity and vision in times of need.
On the flipside, however, though Hourihane would be an excellent addition to the squad when injuries or suspensions strike, he plays an almost identical position, and role, to Newcastle’s regista.
Would there be room for the both in the same squad? Perhaps that is the reason why The Magpies ended their interest rather early.
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