Mikey O’Neill

Quoted from HertsGTFC

As you’ll see there’s a few experts on here who believe they can judge a player just starting out by a few cameos in an inconsistent L2 side still to find its own identity in terms of way of playing.

Hasn’t really made an impact but hasn’t been given much game time in reality, coming on as a sub doesn’t give any illustrations either.

What I would say is that he must have a decent attitude otherwise Hurst would have sent him back.

To be fair, it wasn’t just O’Neill coming in for criticism during many of those match day threads I read, but no smoke without fire and I’m sure he’s played pretty poorly considering so many on here have said so last night and today.

His attitude is first rate by all accounts, and we’ve an honest hard working squad at North End who I’m sure will keep him on the straight and narrow when he returns. Weirdly, we don’t get a lot of time on the ball in the championship either - not unless we play it far too patiently and move the ball across the back 5 for a couple of minutes anyway..

Another young lad full of promise is Finlay Cross-Adair who’s out on loan at Bamber Bridge just now - a striker who’s a bit more physical than Mikey but still very raw.. maybe he could be better suited to League 2 football next season but we shall see.

On a side note, had a soft spot for Grimsby since I got sacked by North End on Football Manager a few years ago during my first season and managed to take you to the Prem with Ryan Ledson as captain. James McKeown, Sebastian Ring, Luke Hendrie, Mattie Pollock, Harry Clifton and Dembele made us a strong side to begin with.

As I’ve said, here’s hoping you have a strong end to the season and a good year ahead

Quoted from Yan89

To be fair, it wasn’t just O’Neill coming in for criticism during many of those match day threads I read, but no smoke without fire and I’m sure he’s played pretty poorly considering so many on here have said so last night and today.

His attitude is first rate by all accounts, and we’ve an honest hard working squad at North End who I’m sure will keep him on the straight and narrow when he returns. Weirdly, we don’t get a lot of time on the ball in the championship either - not unless we play it far too patiently and move the ball across the back 5 for a couple of minutes anyway..

Another young lad full of promise is Finlay Cross-Adair who’s out on loan at Bamber Bridge just now - a striker who’s a bit more physical than Mikey but still very raw.. maybe he could be better suited to League 2 football next season but we shall see.

On a side note, had a soft spot for Grimsby since I got sacked by North End on Football Manager a few years ago during my first season and managed to take you to the Prem with Ryan Ledson as captain. James McKeown, Sebastian Ring, Luke Hendrie, Mattie Pollock, Harry Clifton and Dembele made us a strong side to begin with.

As I’ve said, here’s hoping you have a strong end to the season and a good year ahead

Thanks mate

Yeah like most I feel he's disappointed since a fairly encouraging debut.

His positional sense seems almost non-existent but I'm not sure what his actual position is.  He's mainly come on in wide areas but he looks absolutely lost out there.  

Technically he's shown glimpses of what he can do and whilst fairly quick he's not rapid but he does look like he could do with a few Sunday dinners in him.  If he isn't going to technically cut it at the Championship level and will look to drop down, he definitely needs to work on his physical attributes.

O'Neill is part of a constant conveyer belt of young loanee strikers that arrive here from higher up the ladder and get limited time to impress.  I can't say that 90% of them have offered anything that I wouldn't have expected from our own 17/18/19 year olds.

To be fair on him, not many 18 year olds are ready for first team football. You get the odd exception here and there (Ryan Bennett notably for us), but most don't really come into their own until they are 20-odd.

To adapt in Hursty teams you have to show excessive work rate, another loanie Lloyd has been successful due mainly to that, O'neill has not impressed in that area

O'Neill also hasn't impressed in passing the ball, retaining possession, beating defenders, creating chances etc etc...

That's why he hasn't featured very much. Nothing wrong with expecting hard work from players so I'm not going to criticise Hurst for that approach. For all his abilities, JMD looks as though he's going to be playing 6th tier football next season...

I'm curious as to what his position is at Preston, because I don't think I've seen him in exactly the same role twice for Town this year (which obviously won't have helped him) he's just loosely described as a kind of attacking midfielder/forward.
He's got a good touch on him so I'd be tempted to try him in central midfield where better technical ability can have a big impact in our league, but he's not strong enough or busy enough off the ball to do it - compare him to Khouri for example, one of our lads starting to break into mens football, and the attitude and physicality are markedly different.

There's a player in there somewhere, I think he needs a year or two in the gym and to nail down a position and maybe in 2 years time he'll be ready - he must show something in training because El General does keep selecting him where other loanees are MIA

Thought he looked useful in patches last night going forward, one decent bit of acceleration while beating the fb down the right hand side, but with lots of time his cross hit the first man

With regard to attitude, impressed how keen he was to join in the goal celebrations, it obviously means a lot to him

Quoted from OddShapedBalls

I'm curious as to what his position is at Preston, because I don't think I've seen him in exactly the same role twice for Town this year (which obviously won't have helped him) he's just loosely described as a kind of attacking midfielder/forward.
He's got a good touch on him so I'd be tempted to try him in central midfield where better technical ability can have a big impact in our league, but he's not strong enough or busy enough off the ball to do it - compare him to Khouri for example, one of our lads starting to break into mens football, and the attitude and physicality are markedly different.

There's a player in there somewhere, I think he needs a year or two in the gym and to nail down a position and maybe in 2 years time he'll be ready - he must show something in training because El General does keep selecting him where other loanees are MIA

He’s played in CM, CAM and as second striker in our youth side, but he was brought on in senior games as a 10. His flashes of promise were in this position, sitting just off a lone striker who would do the knocking down and harrying of imposing centre halves. He hasn’t played much for us though so it’s a bit early to say ‘that’s his role’, and he’s been shifted down the pecking order further now due to the form of Daniel Johnson, Josh Onomah and Alan Browne - we might well lose both DJ and JO at the end of the season though so he might well come back with a view to actually playing some men’s footy

Quoted from lee65

Thought he looked useful in patches last night going forward, one decent bit of acceleration while beating the fb down the right hand side, but with lots of time his cross hit the first man

With regard to attitude, impressed how keen he was to join in the goal celebrations, it obviously means a lot to him

To be fair to O'Neill, I watched the Chelsea game last night and it seemed that there wasn't a Chelsea player on the field who could beat the first man with a cross.