Republic of Ireland boss Martin O’Neill says the knee injury suffered by keeper Rob Elliot is a cruel blow.<\/p>\n
The Newcastle player, 29, was carried off after damaging his right knee in the 2-2 draw with Slovakia in Dublin.<\/p>\n
“That was upsetting. It was a cruel blow to himself, his club and indeed ourselves,” said boss O’Neill.<\/p>\n
Darren Randolph came on for Elliot, who must be a major doubt for Newcastle’s Premier League match away to relegation rivals Norwich City on Saturday.<\/p>\n
Elliot has earned praise for his performances since coming into the team in place of injured Dutchman Tim Krul in October.<\/p>\n
He appeared to twist his right knee as he changed direction in an attempt to save Miroslav Stoch’s early goal for Slovakia.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, O’Neill declared himself satisfied as first-half penalties by Shane Long and James McClean earned the Republic a draw against fellow Euro 2016 qualifiers Slovakia.<\/p>\n
“We played some nice attractive football, particularly in the first half,” he said.<\/p>\n
“There were a lot of substitutions made by both teams and that disrupted things in the second half.<\/p>\n
“Overall, there were some good performances. The cohesion we had was surprising given how much we had changed things around for this match.”<\/p>\n
McClean, eager to seal his place in O’Neill’s squad, revealed he is a novice at taking penalties.<\/p>\n
“I took the second penalty because Shane was a bit sore after taking a knock,” added McClean.<\/p>\n
“I had never taken one before so there was a bit of pressure on it.<\/p>\n
“We have a big pool of players now and everyone wants to make that 23. I’m no different.”<\/p>\n
–<\/p>\n
Source: BBC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Republic of Ireland boss Martin O’Neill says the knee injury suffered by keeper Rob Elliot is a cruel blow. The Newcastle player, 29, was carried off after damaging his right knee in the 2-2 draw with Slovakia in Dublin. “That was upsetting. It was a cruel blow to himself, his club and indeed ourselves,” said […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":202713,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[142],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-202712","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-football"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/202712","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=202712"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/202712\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/202713"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=202712"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=202712"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=202712"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}