If Huddersfield Town’s playmaker-in-chief Lewis O’Brien does land in the Premier League next season, make no mistake: he is ready.
O’Brien is edging closer to the top flight move he turned down last summer, with Nottingham Forest now in advanced talks with Huddersfield over a proposed £12million move for the midfielder.
i understands there’s now increasing hope that it will get done – and with it, O’Brien will become the second exciting young English Championship talent to command a significant fee this summer after Keane Lewis-Potter’s move to Brentford.
If they are able to broker the move, Steve Cooper will be gaining a player who has carried a reputation for making things happen in the Championship.
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O’Brien teams up that attacking intent with industry. He is one of the better pressing midfielders in the Championship, something that Cooper will require plenty of if his Forest are able to stay on the front foot after promotion.
If there is a weakness, it is his goal return, which could certainly be higher and has probably put off some of the scouts for the bigger Premier League clubs who regularly watched him. For an attacking player, a return of three goals from 46 matches represents an area he must work on.
But O’Brien retains a work-rate and willingness to learn which one recruitment expert who spoke to i reckoned would see him land on his feet in the Premier League.
Last season, for example, he paid tribute to Carlos Corberan’s tutelage. “In the last two seasons I ran around a lot but probably in the wrong positions,” he told i back in March.
“[Carlos] moulded me as a player, got me a bit more composed on the ball and thinking a lot more about my attacking phases and getting into the box.”
That attitude extends to his off-the-field life: dedicated to football, he may have star quality but there is a lack of ego.
Faced with the choice of moving to Leeds, where he was expected to be a squad player, and staying at Huddersfield he opted for the latter.
Picked up by the king of soccermetrics Victor Orta as a player who would fit into Marcelo Bielsa’s high octane style, O’Brien demurred. He figured more time playing as the fulcrum of a team’s attacking effort in the Championship would be preferable to being a squad man at Elland Road.
For Huddersfield, the ideal would be to keep him. And losing O’Brien would feel like another considerable setback after Corberan’s surprise resignation last week.
But the model that took them to within 90 minutes of the Premier League last season, insists head of football operations Leigh Bromby, is set up to absorb the shock of losing key men. It is a system that will get its ultimate stress test with the apparently imminent departure of such a key man.
Danny Schofield, at least, will get an opportunity to spend the lion’s share of whatever the club raise from O’Brien’s departure. In addition, i understands Huddersfield are one of a number of Championship clubs who have an interest in Newcastle playmaker Elliot Anderson, who is likely to go out on loan again after a successful spell at Bristol Rovers last season.
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