Everton’s Seamus Coleman Suffers Horrific Leg Break After Vile Neil Taylor Challenge

In the past, top spot was never really a viable option.

“I don’t buy the idea that Wales are a decent team without him”.

The draw leaves Wales in third place in World Cup Qualifying Group D at the halfway stage, four points behind joint-leaders Ireland and Serbia.

FIFA’s rankings had the Irish in the fourth group of seeds, but they opened their campaign by snatching a 2-2 draw away against Serbia, huffed and puffed past Georgia at home, then won away in Moldova and Austria.

Put simply, the Irish have nothing to fear in their quest for automatic qualification.

Apart from an annoying trumpet being blasted through the speakers, the Republic, who lost James McCarthy to injury during the warm-up, also lost Seamus Coleman following a poor late challenge from Neil Taylor after 69 minutes. But they have a number of class players – Aaron Ramsey, Joe Allen – and if I was a defender coming up against those guys, I’d want to know as much as possible in advance of who I was marking.

They may lack a star player like Gareth Bale, but Martin O’Neill has made them tough to beat – they’ve conceded just three times so far.

“It was a typically British derby game, there was needle all the way through the game”, Coleman said, via the Telegraph. It came two minutes after Wales talisman Gareth Bale was booked for a foul on John O’Shea. These sorts of things happen in football all the time.

If you’re like me, you didn’t need a reason to hate the worldwide break more than you already do.

There was no question that he went over the top in trying to do so and it has left Séamus with a horrendous looking injury. “Without Bale, they would be very average”. Second half I thought we controlled the game very well.

A former team-mate of Jermain Defoe, the Real Madrid forward is simply unstoppable on his day, but coming up against the world’s best is something O’Shea has grown equipped to thanks to an enormous Premier League career.

The injury looked gruesome enough on the live broadcast, and ESPN did not show a replay of the tackle.

Seconds before Taylor’s brutal lunge on Coleman, Gareth Bale was yellow carded for a studs-up tackle on John O’Shea.