Will it derail our progress? Potentially Aluko & Elmo will be off (presuming Nigeria and Egypt have qualified) Can't see Oli or Faye being involved though.
Stewart will be back by then and if his loan at Burnley goes well, it should fill him with confidence and he could break back into the team.
This is very true. I watched the highlights of Burnley's game on the FLS at the weekend, and I swear I actually saw Stewart have a bloody shot on goal in the build-up to their fifth!
What OLM said, Egypt were surprisingly beaten by the footballing powerhouse of Central African Republic.
He looked good in those highlights, a good shot and a contribution towards a goal if I remember correctly.
Right about Egypt... wrong about Aluko. Aluko hasn't been in the Nigeria squad since June and didn't feature in the last set of Cup of Nations qualifiers
Could Aluko's exclusion be a case of them being qualified and not wanting to take too many of their European based players away from their clubs for long journeys unnecessarily when they can use the game to blood new players? Just that June doesn't sound all that long ago for him to be selected but now out of their plans.
Maybe... but I'm not sure Nigeria are England and are that cocky to leave their best players out Good luck to him though if he does go, just hope he doesn't get crippled
Nigeria are allowed 11 overseas players in their ACoN squad, last list I saw had Aluko as one of the 11.
What would be cocky about leaving them out if they'd already qualified? If we're promoted with 3 games left I'd expect us to drop senior players so that the likes of Cooper could play a few games, it wouldn't make us cocky.
Assuming Nigeria go all the way and he gets selected he could miss probably 4 games, Peterborough (A), Derby (H), Millwall (A), Brighton (A). So with all due respect to the aforementioned teams it could have been a lot worse in terms of opposition.
Actually qualifying for the 2013 Africa Cup of Nations hasn't been completed. The Second Round, Second Leg ties are next month. http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/18721453 It does look likely though that Nigeria will qualify, having drawn their away leg 2-2 in Liberia (Away goals count double in these qualifying stages) 08/09/12: Liberia 2-2 Nigeria 12-14/10/12: Nigeria v Liberia Egypt did indeed go out in the First Qualifying Round
Fantastic news about Elmo but I would expect Aluko will be missing in January. Hopefully Fryatt will be back by then and our 2.6m German has scored his 1st goal by then
The worrying thought about this for me is that when Olifinjana went to sit on the bench in the ANC, he went as the first name down on the team sheet for City. He came back and practically didn't play again until this season.
What will be will be I suppose, there's nothing we can do about it. Hope Oli doesn't get picked by Nigeria but I'm sure Aluko will
Nigeria have also left out big players like Mikel in that squad list, I seriously doubt that will be the final squad for the tournament, but I bet Aluko will be picked on his fine form. We will miss him badly away against posh, they are my favourites for promotion and will be really kicking on for an automatic spot in January.
I'd rather miss him against good teams than bad. Good teams we could slip up against with or without him, bad teams are more likely to be boosted by us being without him and get a result they wouldn't have a chance of normally.
