Injuries curtail O’Neill’s selection options

Martin O'Neill still hasn't managed to get his squad for the European Championship qualifiers against Gibraltar and Germany down to the regulation 23, but his options are already looking pretty unattractive in the wake of Seamus Coleman joining his Everton team-mate James McCarthy yesterday on the injured list.

Both men were on course to earn their 25th senior international caps next Saturday but after O’Neill confirmed that doubts about McCarthy’s availability had been well-founded by omitting him from the trimmed-down, 27-man squad he named on Saturday, Roberto Martinez said yesterday that, having failed to prove his fitness for Everton’s encounter with Manchester United, Coleman would not be travelling to Dublin this week either.

Head injury

Nobody seems to be completely ruling the 25-year-old right back out of the German game yet, but the Donegal man’s lack of any action since September 18th when he suffered a head injury in the Europa League game against Wolfsburg appears to leave little enough basis for optimism. His injury is now said to be a “soft tissue” problem, while McCarthy’s is officially a strain to a quad muscle.

There appear to be no plans to have either come in to be assessed by the association’s medical staff and little expectation that Coleman might recover sufficiently that he would be allowed by his club to travel to Gelsenkirchen next Monday.

The loss of the pair for the match against the world champions would represent a major blow to O’Neill as he tries to engineer a way for Ireland to get something out of the game. Both have become key members of the team and while there are alternatives in both positions, none look especially enticing given the scale of the challenge.

Shay Given is also out of the games, with the Aston Villa goalkeeper withdrawn from the squad over the weekend due to a long-standing hip problem. There were already three goalkeepers in the revised 27- man squad named on Saturday, so there is no need to add to it, although the manager may yet look to broaden his options over the next 24 hours.

Team-mates

With the first training session of the week scheduled for tomorrow morning, the bulk of the squad will arrive in Dublin this evening. Robbie Keane will arrive after another good performance for his club, with the striker scoring twice in LA Galaxy's 3-0 win over Toronto.

His international team- mates didn’t fare as well in yesterday’s games, with Aiden McGeady getting 77 minutes for Everton in their defeat against Manchester United, while Darron Gibson failed to see any action against his old club.

Shane Long came on for the last quarter of an hour as Southampton lost at Spurs, and Anthony Stokes played the full 90 minutes against Hamilton Academical but Celtic were beaten 1-0 at home by the surprise Scottish Premiership leaders.