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O'Neill and Gibson spoke to the media in Malahide this afternoon. Donall Farmer/INPHO
Gibbo Time

Martin O'Neill has dropped a few hints about his Ireland team to face Oman

Darron Gibson is set to start the Aviva Stadium friendly tomorrow night.

DARRON GIBSON WILL make his return to international football tomorrow night — almost 11 months on from his devastating cruciate injury.

Manager Martin O’Neill confirmed that Gibson, who hasn’t played competitively for club or country since October 2013, will start in Ireland’s friendly against Oman.

The Everton midfielder made a few pre-season appearances as he recovered from the ligament damage he suffered against Kazakhstan last year.

With Sunday’s opening Euro 2016 qualifier against Georgia on his mind, O’Neill plans to use the game to give Gibson some much-needed match practice.

O’Neill said: “He’s obviously a very, very decent footballer. He hasn’t played that much but he’s a very, very talented player.

He looks comfortable, he looks in really decent shape. I’m actually looking forward to seeing him play.

O’Neill also hopes that tomorrow’s game will test a few others who carried injuries into the start of the club season, Hull’s Robbie Brady and Wigan’s James McClean in particular.

“I’d like to see the fitness levels of a couple of others – James McClean hasn’t played much and that’s very much a day-by-day thing.

“He’s trained with us for the last few days but he hasn’t had any football since he had an injury way back on July 10 or 12.

“I think Wigan are obviously concerned about him going in. We’ll see how he is today, he hasn’t had that much contact football but those are the sort of things we face so we’ll see how it goes.”

The squad was cut to 26 this morning as defender Joey O’Brien returned to West Ham for treatment on an ongoing knee problem.

“We thought he might have been able to overcome it but he needs some kind of treatment there.

It was puffed out a little bit. We thought it would be okay but he’s gone.

Jon Walters sat out this morning’s session in Malahide as did James McCarthy, although the latter is expected to overcome a foot infection and be ready for Sunday’s trip to Tbilisi.

O’Neill said: “I don’t think James would be playing tomorrow anyway and he should be okay for Sunday.”

Captain Robbie Keane flew in to join the squad last night less than 24 hours after he shrugged off injury concerns with a goalscoring cameo from the bench for LA Galaxy.

“Robbie trained this morning and he’s feeling absolutely fine,” O’Neill added. “He’s had no ill-effects from his strains and he’s feeling pretty good.

“He could be involved tomorrow, yeah.”

Much of the talk this week has centred around the return of Shay Given and O’Neill hinted that he and Rob Elliot are likely to share goalkeeping duties tomorrow.

“I’ll see what happens. At least Keiren Westwood and David [Forde] have both played games and it might be a combination of the other two tomorrow.”

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