The Middlesbrough midfielder is out-performing Leeds United’s Eunan O’Kane this season.
Eunan O’Kane has a big job on his hands to win back the confidence of Leeds United fans after a dreadful few months.
The Republic of Ireland international’s form has nosedived since the turn of the year and he looks a shadow of the player who was given a four-year contract extension earlier in the season.
Such are O’Kane’s woes, it’s impossible to avoid wondering whether Leeds – who sit 13th in the Championship – might have managed a more successful season had they re-signed boyhood fan Jonny Howson.
Howson wound up joining Middlesbrough in a £5 million deal from Norwich City last summer despite speculation of a sensational return to where it all began for him and, if the stats are anything to go by, the Whites would be a better side with the 29-year-old than O’Kane.
Back in October, HITC Sport ran a statistical analysis of the two which indicated that failing to spend that £5 million looked like a shrewd move by the West Yorkshire outfit, but fast forward five months and the numbers are painting quite a different picture this time around.
Howson is clearly a more effective midfielder in an attacking sense by virtue of the fact that he has two goals and set up five goalscoring chances for Boro – two less than Samu Saiz this season – in comparison to O’Kane, who scores a zero in both departments.
In October, Howson trailed the former Bournemouth man in a number of defensive statistics, but Howson has now made 19 more tackles and managed six more ball recoveries than his Northern Irish counterpart.
Oddly, both have misplaced the exact same number of passes – 264 – all season, though it is worth noting that the Boro ace has played over 600 minutes more than O’Kane, who served a three-match ban earlier this year.
| Position | Team | Goals | Big Chance Created | Ball Recovery | Total Tackle | Interception | Total Pass | Accurate Pass | Touches | Appearances | Mins Played | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jonny Howson | MF | Middlesbrough | 2 | 5 | 192 | 74 | 33 | 1,283 | 1,019 | 1,690 | 34 | 2,663 |
| Eunan O’Kane | MF | Leeds | 0 | 0 | 186 | 55 | 36 | 1,176 | 912 | 1,500 | 28 | 2,046 |
O’Kane has intercepted possession for Leeds on 36 occasions, three more than Howson, but on the whole it’s clear that the former Leeds man has been the better of the two this season and although signing Howson wouldn’t have been the difference between failure and success regarding promotion, he is a bigger contributor to that dream than O’Kane.
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