<\/p>\n
Burnley’s Josh Cullen scores their side’s second goal of the game during the Premier League match at the London Stadium<\/p>\n
Ireland\u2019s midfield issues ahead of the World Cup double-header against Portugal and Hungary have worsened as Bristol City have confirmed that Mark Sykes will not be released for international duty.<\/p>\n
But there was some good news for Ireland boss Heimir Hallgrimsson as Josh Cullen and Finn Azaz claimed goals while Jack Taylor and Dara O\u2019Shea got game time and played a role for Ipswich Town in their 4-1 win away to Alan Sheehan\u2019s Swansea City.<\/p>\n
Sykes was a surprise inclusion in the squad for the two qualifiers as the Belfast-born player had suffered a serious cut to his shin while in action for his club against Blackburn Rovers on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
That injury looked likely to keep him out of action for some time. Sykes was still named in the squad by Heimir Hallgrimsson two days later but City boss Gerhard Struber said that Sykes is not fit to travel.<\/p>\n
“He will stay in Bristol,” he told Bristol Live after their Championship game on Friday. \u201cI would say he has to do something [so] that he is quickly back and healthy.\u201d<\/p>\n
Midfield is an area of real concern for Hallgrimsson as Jayson Molumby and Ryan Manning are both suspended for the first of the double-header, at home to Portugal on Thursday, while Jason Knight, Will Smallbone and Bosun Lawal are all out in the medium term with injuries.<\/p>\n
Hallgrimsson is also facing an anxious wait to see if Roma will release Evan Ferguson for the Ireland camp. He was expected to be out for a fortnight with an ankle complaint and he is not in the Roma squad for their Sunday league fixture against Udinese.<\/p>\n
Hallgrimsson said when naming his squad that he was encouraged to hear that Ferguson was \u201cback on the grass\u201d when it came to his rehab at Roma but he was one of four Roma players who trained separately from the main group on Friday. The Roma News outlet in the Italian capital reported that the club would make a decision on Sunday on whether to allow Ferguson join up with the Irish squad.<\/p>\n
Cullen scored for Burnley in a 3-2 defeat to West Ham, O\u2019Shea had an assist for Ipswich in a win at Swansea where there was disappointment for Adam Idah who only managed 10 minutes as a sub in that defeat.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Burnley’s Josh Cullen scores their side’s second goal of the game during the Premier League match at the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":129748,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[61,60,898,112],"class_list":{"0":"post-129747","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-ie","9":"tag-ireland","10":"tag-latest-news-ticker","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129747","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=129747"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129747\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/129748"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=129747"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=129747"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=129747"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}