Report card: Grading the Premier League's Irish cohort
Way back in mid-January, it looked liked this season was going to mark a slight upturn in the overall fortunes of the Premier League's Irish contingent.
The previous campaign had been a nadir in terms of minutes and involvement but spearheaded by Brighton sensation Evan Ferguson and plentiful game-time for Gavin Bazunu and Nathan Collins at Southampton and Wolves respectively, those metrics were trending more positively at the halfway point of the 2022-23 season.
Irish qualified players had accumulated just over 5,800 minutes of Premier League action by 18 January which, if replicated in the second half of the season, would have been on course to improve on the total of less than 10,000 amassed by 14 players during the entirety of 2021-22.
While Ferguson's star continues to shine even more brightly than it did back then, other players' Premier League fortunes have dimmed with some - Matt Doherty most notably - departing the English top flight and others, like Bazunu and Collins, largely dropped during the run-in.
Which means the grand total of minutes played by this season's contingent of 13 Irish players is just 9,323 according to the Premier League's own stats for the past season. That's less than the low water mark of 9,922 from the previous campaign.
Minutes played only tell part of the story of Ireland's Premier League contributors however.
For example, Tom Cannon (Everton) and Conor Coventry (West Ham) barely featured before going out on loan to the Championship, Connor Ronan (Wolves) was in the same boat before leaving for the MLS' Colorado Rapids and Andrew Moran (Brighton) is very much one for the future after being granted short cameos.
So for the nine remaining players under consideration, we are going to examine how