Scout Report: Danny Hone

Ian Holloway said a few weeks back that the reason that he didn't offer trialist Will Haining a contract was that he wanted to bring in a left footed centre half.

Since then, moves to strengthen that area appear to have gone quiet. There were murmurings of moves for Neill Collins of Wolves, Zak Whitbread of Millwall and a return to the seaside for Kaspars Gorkss, but nothing concrete.

Finding a left footed centre half good enough and willing to come to Bloomfield Road is perhaps proving more difficult than Holloway expected, and there are now rumours that he would just be happy to bring a good centre half in for the time being: he is believed to have spoken to Bolton about Danny Shittu.

With that in mind, Vital Blackpool have decided to profile Lincoln City's defender Danny Hone. Only 19 and highly regarded by many, Hone could prove to be one of those lower league players that just needs some shining up that Ollie spoke about on The Football League Show.

Hone is a product of the well regarded Lincoln City Centre of Excellence and is the son of former LCFC defender Mark Hone.

He signed his first professional contract (a two and a half year deal) in December 2007 having started the season as a second year scholar, and scored his first Lincoln goal two months later in a league game v Rochdale.

I was at that Rochdale game and Hone did catch the eye. His goal was brilliant, and his defending showed a nice maturity to it.

Yes, he's a tad on the short side for a centre half (he's just under 6 foot) and perhaps could do with bulking up a bit, but the fact that the likes of Wolves watched him several times last season suggests that he could be set for a bright future in the game.

Indeed, in the 2007/8 season, he was named joint Young Player of the Year at Lincoln and was nominated for League 2 Apprentice of the Year at the annual FourFourTwo Football League awards.

He has made 46 appearances for Lincoln thus far, but that would have undoubtedly been more had he not suffered a knee ligament injury last January and had to have undergone surgery that kept him out for several months.

One to keep an eye on? Certainly.