ANTHONY O’CONNOR puts his heart and soul into football.

But, despite his often-gruelling daily training schedule, he finds difficulty switching-off and putting work to one side.

Which is why, on any given day at home, the quietly-spoken Irishman will be in front of his TV watching football videos in order to collect knowledge from viewing the game’s best defenders or to assess the qualities or deficiencies of opposition strikers.

It is therefore understandable that Louis Moult, an eye-catching performer leading Motherwell’s front line and a player who will come face-to-face with O’Connor when Aberdeen visit Fir Park in the Betfred League Cup quarter-final on Thursday night, has been under the microscope in recent days.

Cork-born O’Connor 24, now in his second season at Pittodrie after a year at Burton Albion, has kept Kari Arnason out of the team having taken the view when the Iceland international arrived last month for a second spell at Pittodrie, that he would up his performance-level to retain his place in Derek McInnes’s side.

Now that yesterday’s game against Kilmarnock is done and dusted, his focus has turned to Motherwell as well as a determination to make amends for conceding a penalty kick in the Betfred League Cup final of last year when Celtic thrashed Aberdeen 3-0. Should he do that there will no longer be a requirement to hide under his duvet for several days.

Meanwhile, he has Mr Moult all figured-out.

“If there’s a game on the telly I’ll watch it whether it’s from the English Championship or League One,” he said.

“As the gaffer says, I’m just a bit of a geek. I watch things on YouTube on certain players like Nemanja Vidic, the ex-Manchester United centre-half, John Terry, when he was at Chelsea, and Sergio Ramos at Real Madrid.

“These are players I look up to and I try and take different bits of their game and add them to mine. I am self-critical and that’s a good thing. You don’t just go home and say ‘I made a mistake but I don’t care’. It hurts me that I’ve let myself down and let down my team-mates and the manager.”

It is in the area of assessment and analyses of immediate opponents, though, that the Republic of Ireland Under-21 international is most impressive, spending the kind of time sussing out opponents that a boxer and his trainer might to look for weak spots.

“I try and look at opposition players and examine before the game the things they’re good at,” he revealed. “I ask myself: ‘If he gets the chance to run at me, what foot should I send him on? Does he like being kicked? Does he like somebody snapping at his heels? Does he shy away from the battle?’

“You pick up little things like that. At the first goal kick, for instance, I wonder: ‘Will he shy out of

going for the header with me?’

“If I win the header and clean him out as well, then in my head I thinking ‘bang, that’s one up for me; I’m mentally ahead of him now. I’ve won the first battle’. If there’s a 50-50 tackle I’m going make sure I win it and that I’ll go through him and he’s going to know it. You get different strikers every week – big ones, small ones, some who are quick, others who are strong. You just got to use your brain and figure out the best way to handle them.”

McInnes is keen to persuade O’Connor to extend his contract, scheduled to expire next summer, at Pittodrie.

But the player in no rush to make such an early commitment given that the season has just started.

He insists, however, he’s never been more content than he is at present.

“The manager knows this is the happiest I’ve been in football. I go home every day with a smile on my face and I’m more than happy to be here. I’m honoured to be at such a big club but it’s still early-on in the season – there’s practically a whole season to go – for me to reach a decision on this.”

Meanwhile, the centre-back has his sights set on silverware and wiping out the memory of fouling James Forrest in the box in last term’s Betfred Cup final which allowed Moussa Dembele to convert from the spot.

“That was a bit of a sickener, even though we were 2-0 down at the time. I thought about that game for weeks. It was in my head. I remember doing a radio interview and said I’d been living like a monk. I said I hadn’t left my bed for days. But that has spurred me on to try and reach the final again this season."