One man of the match performance against the Championship's bottom side isn't going to get him into the final squad but if Alan Judge keeps this kind of form up, Martin O'Neill is going to have some thinking to do. Roy Keane was in the Macron Stadium last night to keep an eye on Judge and the Championship's form player did not disappoint in the 1-1 draw between Bolton and Brentford.
Having been named Championship player of the month for October, the 27 year old closed out November with another accolade, picking up the man of the match award from Sky.
Man of the Match: Brentford's Alan Judge - total passes 43 (88.4% accuracy), 28 passes in opp. half - 64 touches pic.twitter.com/KouKzRSjLN
— Sky Sports Statto (@SkySportsStatto) November 30, 2015
Almost 90% pass accuracy and well over half of those passes in the oppositions half. There's not too many Irish midfielders who can regularly boast those kind of stats. And with man of the match performances in front of Keane, Judge's first senior cap is surely just around the corner.
As things stand, we only have a March friendly against Switzerland to look forward to between now and Euro 2016. There's likely to be a few more friendlies added now that our place in France is confirmed and Judge is really starting to put his hand up.
On Monday we looked at Richie Towell's chances of making the Ireland squad and the tl;dr version is that it's going to be next to impossible for the former Dundalk man to do enough between now and June to to squeeze into Martin O'Neill's plans. The reason for that is the form of the likes of Judge and Bournemouth's Harry Arter.
Our early squad prediction looks like this, but we're starting to doubt ourselves.
Arter and Meyler and the two dodgy picks at the moment. They're different types of players however and if Judge is to be the bolter that many fans are expecting him to be, it's likely that it's Arter who he'll have to overcome. Meyler is probably up against the likes of Darron Gibson and Stephen Quinn for the added solid midfielder slot, while it's currently between Arter and Judge for the creative midfielder role.
Both are going to get a chance to impress in the coming months but if Judge keeps up these man of the match performances then it's going to be very difficult for Martin O'Neill to overlook him.
