Hendrie was almost in the wrong era for his talents. We saw plenty of good stuff from him, but through most of his time here, bar a period under JG, he was very much in a 4.4.f.2 system and having to play wide. If he was on the left, able to cut in he found it more comfortable. I don't think he was that comfortable on the right (Barry played a lot on the left for a number of years) because maybe as a wide player in that era there's an onus to get your boots chalky and get down the line to deliver crosses.
People are falling over themselves to praise Maddison. Hendrie was potentially a great no8/10. But yeah, we saw a lot of great moments from him. He scored a good amount of goals and in his time was probably a little underappreciated. It might be that his antics held him back a little, but most seasons he was here and playing he tended to have hot periods where he looked the dogs bits. Again, I think playing so much on right mid, and not being a full back roasting pace merchant, you tended to see him in flashes during a game rather than a constant influence. Look at some of the footballing ability we've had, and we played great stuff in flashes with the likes of Lee, Merse, Angel, Barry, Nobby (also Carbone, Ginola, Hadji) we didn't always have the right approach to utilising a lot of our technical players as much as certain managers might have been getting at other clubs. Granted it's Brazil 1970 compared to our play now but we had too many games under Gregory in particular that were very dour, and pretty rigid. On the flipside, had Hendrie fulfilled all that potential, would have been snagged by Utd or the like after a couple of seasons?
I hope he's on the up with his mental health. I concur, he's one of the better pundits out there, seems a decent bloke on the whole too.