Kelly back in, Gibson still out in latest Irish squad

Still no Darron Gibson, or Richard Dunne, in the 29-man squad named by Giovanni Trapattoni this morning for our vital World Cup qualifier double header.

A couple of massive games are coming down the tracks for Ireland. If we can do well in our upcoming games away to Sweden and home to Austria our road to Rio hopes are back on track. Suffer a pair of defeats and, well, you can imagine.

So here’s the 29-man squad Trap has selected for the job. It will be trimmed to 23 closer to the game but for now this is the pool he’ll be picking from.

As we knew from last night, Richard Dunne won’t be back, as he continues to try and recover from injury. His loss cannot be understated. In defence Stephen Kelly is back in the fold, which is a bit of a surprise after all that has gone on. Ian Harte, you won’t be surprised to hear, is not.

In midfield it seems that Darron Gibson is still not ready to return, a shame as we could do with the Everton man around the middle.

The rest is as you would expect. The Derby duo of Jeff Hendrick and Conor Sammon keep their place, as does the Norwich duo of Anthony Pilkington and Wes Hoolahan. Pilkington didn’t get a chance to play against Poland so we hope he has better luck this time. Marc Wilson also makes a welcome return from injury.

Robbie Keane is in after resting for the Poland friendly, while the young guns like Robbie Brady, James McClean and Seamus Coleman are all included.

It looks like a decent squad, with perhaps David Meyler, and the injured Keith Andrews, the only name that jumps out as being an obvious exclusion.

Squad: Westwood, Forde, Randolph, O'Shea, St. Ledger, Clark, Wilson, Coleman, Kelly, O'Dea, O'Brien, McShane, Pearce, Ward, Whelan, McCarthy, Green, Hendrick, McGeady, Pilkington, McClean, Brady, Keane, Long, Doyle, Sammon, Walters, Cox, Hoolahan