When Josh Honohan joined Lincoln City, I felt we were signing a player with the Championship in mind.
There was something about his profile, his versatility and the reputation he had built in Ireland that suggested he could grow with us. Now we are in the Championship, but Josh is still waiting for the opportunity to establish himself.
That is a situation worth discussing, because his first months here have been very different from what many of us expected. A lengthy injury absence has been followed by limited involvement, and the squad around him has changed considerably. However, I don’t think that means we should rush to write him off.
Josh arrived from Shamrock Rovers in January, having helped them win the League of Ireland and FAI Cup double. He had European experience, had been selected in the PFAI Team of the Year in successive seasons and had earned a senior Republic of Ireland call-up, which is rare for a player in the League of Ireland. There was a substantial body of work behind our interest, rather than a handful of promising performances.
Unfortunately, he also arrived with an injury, and we never got to see him contribute to our promotion campaign. At the time of his move, the club explained that he had developed a load-related problem towards the end of Shamrock’s season and would need a gradual return. Whatever our expectations were when the deal was announced, his first task became getting fit.
While he was working through that, we were winning League One. Players were establishing themselves in a successful team, and promotion brought another round of recruitment and a higher standard of opposition. Josh was effectively trying to catch up with a club that had moved forward considerably during his absence.
That matters when we assess where he is now. He missed the opportunity to learn our game through a run of competitive appearances in League One, and instead has had to begin that process in the Championship. It is a difficult introduction, particularly when the players ahead of you are already trusted to do the job.
We spoke about him feeling like a new signing when he recovered, and I understood that. There was still a player we were looking forward to seeing, with the ability to operate in several defensive positions. Yet being available again and being ready to force your way into the side are two different stages of a return.
I haven’t watched Josh and thought he looked a million miles away. Equally, something is keeping him from making a stronger claim, whether that is the football he has missed, adapting to our requirements or simply the quality of the competition. We can see the selections, but we don’t see everything that informs them during the week.
The moment that highlighted how his situation had changed was Tendayi Darikwa’s injury. It seemed reasonable to think that might open the door for Josh on the right, with Tom Hamer or Andrei Coubiș providing alternatives. Instead, we brought in Daniel Oyegoke, adding another player in the area where Josh might have expected his chance.
To me, that suggested the club wanted an option it felt able to use immediately. It doesn’t tell us that Josh has no future here, but it does tell us something about where he stood at that point. The demands of staying competitive in the Championship couldn’t wait for him to build up the football he had missed.
His league involvement has amounted to a few minutes at Bolton, alongside his cup opportunities. That is very little on which to judge a player, but it is also very little football with which to build rhythm. With our Carabao Cup run over, those additional opportunities have disappeared for the time being.
Looking across the backline, there isn’t an obvious opening. On the left, Adam Reach and Callum Elder are ahead of him in the conversation, while Ryley Towler can cover there. Josh’s versatility is useful, but it cannot guarantee a place when there are established options in each role.
On the right, Daniel and Andrei look like the leading choices, even before Tom Hamer’s eventual return becomes a consideration. Further injuries or a change in form could alter that, of course. As things stand, though, Josh needs to move past several players to get the sustained involvement that would help him progress.
That is why a January loan doesn’t feel particularly unlikely to me. There is still time for his position to change before the window, and this is my reading of the situation rather than a suggestion that anything has been decided. If he remains on the fringes, however, regular football elsewhere could make sense for everyone.
The destination would matter. After such a long absence, he would need a club where there was a clear opportunity to play and a role that helped him develop. Moving him somewhere to spend another few months waiting for minutes would do little to address the problem.
Rob Street provides a very good example of what the right loan can achieve. He went to Doncaster Rovers in January 2025, scored 12 goals and helped them win League Two. He then returned to us and reached double figures in the league during our own title-winning campaign.
There is no guarantee Josh would follow the same path, because their circumstances and positions are different. However, Rob’s experience shows why a spell away needn’t be the beginning of the end. Regular football can help a player return with a much stronger claim than he had when he left.
I also think we need to remember that Josh is a person as well as an investment. He moved over after a successful spell in Ireland and has spent much of his time here dealing with an injury and waiting to play. It must be frustrating, especially when the club’s progress has made the competition around him stronger.
We identified ability worth bringing to Lincoln, and he has barely had the chance to show us how far that can take him. If a loan becomes the best way to give him that chance, I would see it as a sensible part of his development. I certainly wouldn’t be looking to cash in before we have given him a proper opportunity to turn that ability into something valuable on the pitch.
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