Blackburn Rovers' January dilemma grows as plaudits continue

The 21-year-old has earned rave reviews for Donny after a blistering start in League One. Last year's fourth-tier title winners sit second in the standings with 16 points from seven games.

O'Riordan has been central to that, starting every game so far at centre-back. It has been a far better 2025 for the young centre-back after a troublesome 12 months.

Opportunities at Ewood Park have been hard to come by. He spent the first part of last year with Cambridge United but barely got a game.

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However, a January switch to former club Crewe Alexandra has helped O'Riordan regain his confidence. Now, back at the third tier, he is really impressing for Grant McCann's side.

So much so, he even performed admirably out of position at right-back in their weekend victory. McCann was forced to shuffle the tall defender across, something he found unnatural, yet he rose to the challenge again. 

"It was a late call really," McCann explained. "I spoke to Connor Friday about it and he was a wee bit nervous and anxious.

"He'd never played there before but I said to Connor to just treat it as if he was playing on the right side of a back three, because I know he did that at Crewe and he was terrific.

“We went into this game without a recognised right back, which was really difficult, we had to readjust.

“Connor was just brilliant there. It’s not a position he’s used to nut he went in and delivered a really good performance.

“He dealt with everything that went his way, stepped forward, got forward, got a couple of crosses into the box.

“When he was coming off, he said don’t play me there again but I thought he did really well."

It's unknown at this stage whether Blackburn have a recall option in January, though it relatively standard to include a clause which would enable them to do so.