Heff Deserves His Chance With Owls

Paul Heffernan was handed the famous number nine shirt when joining Wednesday during the summer, but he hasn’t started a league game yet for the struggling Owls.

The Irish striker arrived at Hillsborough from Doncaster Rovers with a reputation for grabbing goals at a good rate at every club he’s played at.

He wasn’t going to ‘rip the division apart’ by any stretch of the imagination, but he was a good bet for netting goals on a regular basis for the Owls, especially in the third tier of English football.

So why has Owls boss Alan Irvine refused to start Heff in any league games this season, instead sticking with Marcus Tudgay, who’s yet to score from open play this season, Clinton Morrison, who looks far from in peak condition, and Neil Mellor, who has quickly become a pretty useless cog in the side following his one-man demolition job of Hartlepool United.

It was quite understandable that Heffernan would be on the bench when Wednesday made such a good start to the season, even though the goals weren’t flowing too freely (Hartlepool aside).

But a four-game run which has seen Wednesday struggle in front of goal should have seen Heffernan introduced.

He showed more in the short spell he had on the pitch as a substitute in last night’s stalemate against Oldham Athletic than Tudgay and Morrison did collectively throughout the match.

Fair enough, that didn’t take much given last night’s showing, but it was enough to warrant a first league start of the season when Wednesday travel to Notts County this Saturday.

I’m guessing that Irvine won’t agree with me on that one, though.

Instead we’ll stick with Tudgay, a player who seems pretty much undroppable this season. A striker who doesn’t score, great.

My money is on Mellor getting a recall too, one of Alan’s ‘favourites’ by the looks of things so early in the season.

It’s easy enough to call on those not having much of a say when things aren’t going so well – anyone but those on the pitch will be some people’s mentality.

But Heff deserves his chance at a first league start, why bring him to the club in the first place if we’re paying him to sit on the bench week in, week out.

Let’s give our number nine a chance to show that he really deserves that number nine shirt, and hopefully he’ll fire us to a much-needed three points.