MARTIN O’NEILL MAY have been less than pleased with the news that Jack Grealish has declared for England, but the Ireland boss can take some consolation from the recent excellent form of another exciting creative midfielder — Wes Hoolahan.

The Norwich midfielder laid on an assist for Nathan Redmond’s goal against West Ham, taking his assists to five for the season.

The former Shelbourne player consequently tops the Premier League assists chart according to ESPN, one ahead of Man City players David Silva and Yaya Toure, who are joint-second on four.

Meanwhile, there is some debate over whether Hoolahan is, or at least was, top of the European assists charts.

The football stats site Squakwa on Saturday tweeted that no player had registered more assists than Hoolahan across the big five European leagues.

Nevertheless, due to the degree of ambiguity over what exactly constitutes an assist, there is some debate over whether Bayern Munich’s Douglas Costa has registered more assists than the Irish player.

WhoScored, ESPN and Squawka all claim Costa has registered five assists in the Bundesliga, which would put him joint-top with Hoolahan.

However, TransferMarkt and Bild both claim Costa has 10 Bundesliga assists.

Either way, from an Irish perspective, it’s encouraging to see Hoolahan in good form ahead of next month’s vital Euro 2016 qualifiers against Germany and Poland.

Originally published at 15.34

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