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Follow us on Twitter @claretandview // Words by Mitchell Grimes (@mitchell_grimes)
Since making his big money transfer from Brentford, Scott Hogan has been disappointing to say the least. The striker hasn’t netted a single league goal this season but has scored 3 goals in 3 cup appearances, coming off a fantastic 2016/17 season with Brentford scoring 15 goals in total, 14 with Brentford and just the 1 at Villa.
Since making his move to villa in January, Hogan hasn’t really been able to get himself
going. His 2016/17 campaign was cut short following an ankle injury and since returning tothe first team he’s certainly struggling to hit the back of the net.
Some put Hogan’s lack of goals down to Steve Bruce’s style of play, not being able to pick
out his runs and hoofing the ball long, isolating him from the rest of the team. Whether or not you blame Hogan or Bruce, either way you look at it we’ve got a 15-million- pound striker sitting on the bench, not scoring goals.
Hogan is starting to slip down the pecking order a fair bit, but with Kodjia not fully fit yet, Keinan Davis still learning the game, and McCormack seemingly on his way to Australia, having Hogan scoring a few goals would take a lot of the pressure off Bruce and the rest of the squad, especially seeing as our only multiple goal-scorers this season have been Adomah, Davis and Hourihane, and with our strikers only contributing 3 league goals so far, coming from Agbonlahor and young Keinan.
So the real question is how can Bruce can Hogan firing again?
You can never question Hogan’s endeavour when he plays, he always seems to put in a shift and you can see he wants to score badly but things just don’t seem to be going his way which must be frustrating him as much as the fans.
In my opinion, the most dangerous Hogan’s looked for Villa is when he’s come off the bench against tired legs, he’s able to use his pace to drive at the heart of the defence and make some quality chances for himself and when he’s up and going, very few defences in the league will be able to cope.
If Hogan persists and continues to work hard, he should eventually get himself a few goals and hopefully kick on from there, even if he doesn’t have another 15 goal plus season, if he pops up with a few here and there it could be the difference between Championship and Premier League football next season.
