Martin O’Neill defends James McCarthy handling but Ronald Koeman fumes

Martin O’Neill has defended Ireland’s handling of the injury-prone James McCarthy but, overnight, Ronald Koeman has strongly criticised both the player and the Ireland manager for the ultimately unfruitful decision to select him for last week’s World Cup qualifier against Wales.

The Everton boss alleged in the Daily Mirror: “It was a final decision against the medical staff of Ireland and also against the medical staff of Everton. And there are two people responsible for that. One is the player himself. Finally, if he says, ‘Yes, I’m fit’, okay but even the player needs protection from the manager and, once again, they didn’t give that protection to the player.”

Speaking before being made aware of the precise nature of Koeman’s allegations, O'Neill had said that it’s chiefly up to Everton and McCarthy to try to find a solution to his recurring hamstring problems, after the midfielder had seemingly recovered in time to be named in Friday’s starting XI only to then pull up during the pre-match warm-up.