Coventry City manager Tony Mowbray said that Jim O'Brien came to him, wanting to play every week.
Mowbray said to the Coventry Telegraph's Andy Turner about O'Brien who has gone on an initial month's loan: “Jim came to see me this week and said he feels that he needs to be playing every week.
“I couldn’t guarantee that but I told him he’d still be used as a squad player and, let’s be honest, he’d probably have started half the games and gone on as a sub in half the games we have left. For instance, we have Saturday/Tuesday, Saturday/Tuesday coming up and he’d have probably started two of those.
“But it’s a combination of things really. He lives in Barnsley – I think he moved back in the summer – and it’s an hour and 45 minutes, sometimes two hours, every day for him. He stays in a hotel the night before games at a shared cost.
“As a manager I need my players fit and ready and I think it was the culmination of everything, Jim doing too much travelling and wanting to play every minute of every game. He was getting unhappy and you have to understand Jim’s personality as well. It’s a strong personality and if he’s not playing and unhappy it can have repercussions, so when this opportunity came it was something he instigated through not playing each week or feeling close to his family and it seemed right for everyone.
“I pick a team to try to win a match and if Jim is not prepared to be part of the group and has to sit on the bench sometimes, what should I do? If he comes to me and says he wants to move on loan, what are my options?
“Everyone has got their favourite players but bottom line Maddison, Cole, Murphy, Armstrong were the four at the weekend and we managed to get a positive result and Jim was sitting on the bench and he’s not happy to sit on the bench.
“For me, as a coach, I need a team that is 100 per cent with us all the time. The group has to be strong and positive and his personality isn’t that sort of lad where he accepts not playing without grumbling or being unhappy.”
More on this - http://www.coventrytelegraph.net/sport/football/football-news/coventry-citys-jim-obrien-instigated-10901685