Owing to injuries of varying severity to Jon Walters, Darryl Murphy, Robbie Keane and Kevin Doyle, Ireland are extremely short of striking options for tomorrow night's friendly game with Slovakia. Shane Long is Ireland's only fit striker, far from ideal given that the Southampton man played the full ninety minutes against Switzerland on Friday.
Earlier today we brought you the news that forgotten Irish striker Leon Best had reaffirmed his availability to O'Neill in the manager's hour of need, but sadly it appears as if the Irish manager has disregarded Best's call.
Instead, O'Neill told the press this afternoon that James McClean is likely to fill the forward role tomorrow night, while also lamenting the string of injuries:
I'm not going to bring anybody in at this late notice.
We can adjust things. James McClean has played up front before. I've seen him play for Wigan there and he's done exceptionally well.
It's been a bit of a disruption of course. Kevin Doyle started the game [against Switzerland] but I wanted him to play at least an hour or the whole game, depending on how fit he was.
It was an opportunity for him and I felt he started the game quite well. He was obviously unfortunate to get injured.
I was probably thinking Robbie Keane would be involved at some stage in one of the two games and I thought Jon Walters would be fit as well. But these things happen.
McClean came on as a substitute for the injured Daryl Murphy against Switzerland on Friday, where he played the closing moments of the game alongside Shane Long in a central role.
He failed to impress for those few minutes - mainly because the game had virtually ceased as a contest following Kevin Doyle's injury - but he will hopefully pounce on the opportunities afforded by an extended showcase against Slovakia. He will likely face Martin Skrtel tomorrow night, which will probably help McClean to do so.
