Irish eyes could be smiling on ‘Go-To’ Hoolahan in Norwich’s Premier League season

Grant Holt, Paul Lambert and Delia Smith have hogged plenty of Norwich City’s headlines since The Canaries remarkable upward ascent began in August 2009, but it’s diminutive midfield maestro Wes Hoolahan who is set to be the star of Norwich’s first Premier League season in six years.
The all-action Norwich number 14 has made the attacking midfield slot his own in three seasons at Carrow Road and last season was the best exponent at playing in that key position at the front tip of the midfield diamond in the Championship.
The last decade in the Premier League has seen team use central midfielders in a variety of roles. Didier Deschamps was the archetypal Water Carrier (as named by Eric Cantona), that no frills midfielder who broke up play and got the ball moving forward. Claude Makelele and Patrick Vieria followed in a similar role, Newcastle’s Chiek Tiote excelled in the same role last season.
Norwich boss Lambert was quick to recruit Bradley Johnson from Leeds to fill that role, and another Lambert signing, David Fox, is the man who fills the Quarterback role for Norwich.
We’ve recently seen the emergence of the that role named after the key man in American football – with Tom Huddlestone and Paul Scholes a good example of a QB (a term first coined in football by Harry Redknapp) – the midfielder who sprays passes around from deep and rarely gets forward.
But the role Hoolahan plays is, to borrow another phrase from the American sporting vernacular, the ‘Go To’ guy.
This is the role that Lionel Messi and Luka Modric execute week in week out. They’re the players that the ball is off-loaded to around the edge of the box when things need to happen.
In American football the quarterback will look for this Go To man when there’s nothing else on or if he’s pressurised and just as Messi is for Barcelona and Modric is for Spurs, Hoolahan will be for Norwich.
Under Paul Lambert, for whom he originally played at Livingston in 2006/07, Hoolahan has become the most inspirational player for Norwich during the last three seasons. It is expected he will see plenty of time on the ball in the forthcoming season and, while Norwich fans may dub him ‘Lionel Wessi’ in honour of his importance to the side, there is genuine optimism that he could also rekindle his international career with Ireland with a season in football’s elite league.
It’s all a far cry from the summer of 2008 when Hoolahan signed for Norwich from Blackpool in a £250,000 switch that saw promising Canaries’ keeper Matt Gilks go the other way. Hoolahan made his debut for Glenn Roeder’s City at Coventry’s Ricoh Arena in August 2008 and of the 13 other Canaries on duty that day, only Hoolahan is still at the club.
He’d recently made his Ireland debut too, coming on as a late substitute in a friendly against Colombia at Craven Cottage, which was Giovanni Trapattoni’s first match in charge.
While Hoolahan’s international future looked bright back then, he has been overlooked by Trap ever since and failed to make it back into the Irish squad since.
On paper, former Juve boss Trap’s decision looks sound. Hoolahan has played in three different divisions for Norwich since that international debut.
The 2008/09 season ended for Hoolahan in March 2009. He was far from influential in the first half of the season as Roeder’s team, made up of too many short-term loan signings to have any consistency about them, floundered with relegation.
When Bryan Gunn took over in January 2009, Hoolahan burst into life, scoring twice at Carrow Road in Gunn’s first two games in charge. Those goals were his first two in a Norwich shirt, the second against Southampton was an absolute cracker. Sadly for Norwich and for Hoolahan, his season ended in mid-March with injury. He watched on helplessly as Norwich were relegated to League One.
His next Carrow Road appearance was in the infamous 7-1 defeat to Colchester which spelt the end for Gunn at the club. Reunited with Lambert, Hoolahan has appeared as the most advanced player in a midfield diamond for the club for the last two seasons with spectacular results.
He’s bagged 21 league goals in two seasons and proved to be a crucial influence on City. Any Canaries fan who saw Hoolahan in action last season will tell you he’s the perfect complement to the more pedestrian Fox. Displays towards the end of the season were most noteworthy for the sight of Hoolahan’s thick mop of hair (he vowed not to cut it while City were on such a good run of form) flowing as he twisted and turned in midfield in order to find space.
Last season there were the occasional stunning moments – the goal against Leicester and the festive treble against Sheffield United – mixed in with the frustrating – the agonising missed penalty at home to Preston, but it was his overall work ethic that really stood out.
He made the Championship team of the season and finished third in the club’s player of the season voting, but there is little doubt that Norwich will look to Hoolahan to inspire them in this coming season.
At Carrow Road he’ll drive the team forward but it’s on the road where he could come into his own. If Lambert opts to play five across the middle, as so many teams of Norwich’s stature do, that could mean Fox and Johnson both utilised as the Water Carrier and the Quarterback.
Go To Wes would be the man to pick the lock of those Premier League defences and, who knows, perhaps at the end of the season he’ll be a part of Ireland’s Euro 2012 plans, should they qualify.
As if to remind Trapattoni of Hoolahan’s quality, Norwich will play some of those away games in their newly designed away kit of green shirts and white shorts that looks just like the Republic of Ireland’s strip.