Heimir Halgrímsson has been dealt a blow to his hopes of World Cup qualification as Robbie Brady has been ruled out of the rest of the campaign through injury.
The full-back, who was named senior men’s international player of the year for last year, missed the first two qualifiers through a calf injury, as the Republic of Ireland made a disappointing start with a draw against Hungary and defeat to Armenia.
Brady picked up the injury in a behind-closed-doors pre-season friendly and is yet to feature this season.
Preston manager Paul Heckingbottom confirmed Brady will miss several months after undergoing surgery.
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Heckingbottom said: “Robbie’s going to be out for a while. I spoke to Robbie last week about it. The calf injury that he suffered, we knew it was a bad one, but we’ve been speaking to some surgeons and getting medical advice, the decision was to go and have an operation to help limit the chance of it reoccurring.
“It means that the rehab’s going to take longer. He’s had the operation and he’s on the mend, but it’s going to be months rather than weeks.
“We sort of kept that quiet because there was nothing until we knew which way we were going to go. I had a chat with Robbie last week. Obviously we were all really upset that it was going to take this length of time but everyone’s comfortable with the decision and think that we’ve done the right thing and Robbie’s on the mend now.”
