Luke Moore, Not A Forgotten Villan

Martin O’Neill has told Luke Moore that he hasn’t been forgotten.

Moore, who is back to scoring ways in the reserves following his return from his shoulder injury and subsequent surgery, is still very much in the managers plans.

O’Neill told the official site: ‘You can’t discount his goalscoring efforts for the reserves and some goals have been very good. So he’s getting there. Now it’s just a case of breaking into the team. I think just the fitness element of Luke’s game is the one thing he could do with expediting. He’s had no problems with the shoulder.’

Adding: ‘Up until he got the shoulder injury at Chelsea he was a permanent fixture in the team, so I saw a lot of him then. You could say he was maybe playing out of position, on the left-hand side, with Juan Pablo Angel through the middle and Gabby on the right. He was doing fine, but he got injured and we have more strength in depth now. So it’s up to him to force his way back in. Had he been fit by say late November, the chances would have been there because we didn’t have the strength in depth.’

‘Now we have more to choose from and Luke is one of those options. It’s up to him to force his way in and take his chance.’

Moore isn’t in tonight’s reserve team squad so could feature for the full team against Arsenal on Wednesday night.