John O’Shea versus Edin Dzeko is still on the cards.
The Republic of Ireland centre-half will miss the first leg of the play-off with Bosnia-Herzegovina through suspension but there were fears last night he could miss the second due to injury.
The Waterford native hobbled off with a hamstring problem before half-time of Sunderland’s 3-0 Tyne-Wear derby victory over local punch-bags Newcastle United.
However new manager Sam Allardyce – who became the fourth Sunderland manager in a row to beat the Toon Army in his second game in charge – allayed fears that the 34 year old would be facing a lengthy spell out through injury.
He did not however allay fears that O’Shea may face a lengthy spell out of the side, as the former Bolton and Newcastle manager sang the praises of his replacement Sebastian Coates when speaking to Newstalk’s Nathan Murphy after the game.
“We won’t know until we scan him in a couple of days. He feels it is not a serious hamstring, he feels it is what we call a tweak.
“Hopefully Johnno, Younes Kaboul and Ola [Toivonen] … I think we’ll be lucky to get anyone back for next week but hopefully they will only miss one game becauise, certainly from a defensive point of view we have probably got enough centre-halfs but from a midfield point of view we lose an important player to us.
“Today we took two off and put two on and didn’t affect our performance, which is pleasing to me. It suggests the bench is pretty strong,” said Allardyce.
If O’Shea does miss the weekend trip to Everton it will mean Saturday week’s home match with Southampton will be his last competitive outing before being available for the second leg of the Euro 2016 play-off in the Aviva on Monday November 16th.
The away leg is on Friday November 13th, in Zenica.
