Seamus Coleman the main concern ahead of squad announcement

Republic of Ireland manager Martin O’Neill will name his preliminary squad for the decisive European championship qualifiers against Germany and Poland next month on Thursday afternoon at the FAI’s headquarters in Abbotstown.

The Derry man will be hoping to have pretty much everyone to choose from and will, at this stage, most likely name just about all of them with recent squads initially running to comfortably more than 30 players.

Everton right back Seamus Coleman is a concern for the manager, however, with the 26-year-old having a scan on Tuesday on the hamstring problem that caused him to limp out of Saturday's defeat of league champions Chelsea at Goodison Park.

Coleman, who had recently missed Ireland’s game against Gibraltar due to concerns about the hamstring, played 77 minutes of the game before being replaced.

His absence for the games against Germany and Poland on October 8th and 11th respectively, would be a major blow to O’Neill who would most likely be wary of Cyrus Christie’s inexperience despite his goal and strong overall showing on his competitive debut in Faro.

Everton manager Roberto Martinez was more upbeat about the hamstring injury suffered by Coleman than the similar injury picked up by Bosnian forward Muhamed Besic, who was replaced by Steven Naismith after just nine minutes, with the Scotland international going on to score a hat-trick against Jose Mourinhoi’s side.

“Forty-eight hours after the game, we’re quite positive in the way Mo and Seamus feel,” said Martinez. “I think Seamus felt a lot better than Mo (immediately after the game) but we’re going to get the scans done today so we have a clear idea.

“I don’t think it looks as bad as we feared once it happened but we’ll get more information as the week goes on and we’ll see how long a period we’re looking at for the two players.”