REPUBLIC OF Ireland manager Giovanni Trapattoni is expected to hear today just how long Manchester City’s medical team estimate it will take Shay Given to recover from the dislocated shoulder he suffered in Saturday’s game against Arsenal in London.
The extent of the goalkeeper’s injury was still being assessed yesterday but initial reports suggested it was a particularly bad one and the FAI were not ruling out last night the possibility that the Donegal man would miss the opening game of Ireland’s European Championship campaign, against Armenia in September.
That would pitch Given’s recovery at significantly longer than the 12 weeks normally associated with this injury and there is always the worry of his aggravating the injury on his return, particularly in view of the 34-year-old’s role with the team.
Trapattoni, like Roberto Mancini, will be hoping Given returns much earlier and that he might feature on the opening weeks of next season but the City manager has more immediate problems, with two of his other goalkeepers unavailable for the end of this campaign, with Joe Hart on loan at Birmingham and Stuart Taylor sidelined by a knee injury.
Given’s injury, sustained while making a fine save from Abou Diaby late in the scoreless draw at the Emirates, meant a first team debut on Saturday for 23-year-old Gunnar Nielsen, a Faroese international whose previous senior experience amounted to club games back home, five matches for Wrexham during a loan spell, and a couple of caps.
The goalkeeper could now play a key role in the closing stages of City’s multimillion pound campaign to qualify for the Champions League next season. Hart, it seems, cannot be recalled and Taylor, is unlikely to be deemed fit enough for action in the critically important games against Aston Villa and Tottenham.
City are said to be exploring the possibility of an emergency loan but, just in case, Mancini set about building up the new man’s confidence.
“Shay’s injury will be a problem,” acknowledged the Italian. “It’s not good for us because Shay is a fantastic goalkeeper. He is important to us, but in football you can always get injured. Shay is in hospital, but we have 10 days and must play three big games. Stuart is still some way off and everyone must be 200 per cent now but Gunnar came on and did very well.”
Trapattoni, who is due to name his development squad for the training camp at Malahide in May this morning, is bound to commence similar work on Keiren Westwood’s self-belief and the manager will now almost certainly look to give the Coventry City goalkeeper additional international experience in the friendlies against Algeria and Paraguay next month.
The 25-year-old also looks to be in pole position to start the prestigious game with Argentina at the Aviva stadium on August 11th.
The hope will be that Trapattoni will have broadened his options on a few other fronts by then too, with the likes of Stephen Ward of Wolves, Birmingham’s Keith Fahey and Séamus Coleman of Everton amongst those expected to get a chance to impress over the few days of training and low intensity games at Malahide.
Ireland start their Euro 2012 campaign with a tricky but winnable away game in Armenia followed quickly by a match in Dublin against Andorra in the first competitive game at the redeveloped Lansdowne Road.
The following month, Trapattoni’s men face into two of their toughest games, with top seeds Russia, coming to Dublin on the 8th and Ireland travelling to Slovakia to face another major group rival.
