MARTIN O’NEILL IS clearly not happy with Everton boss Ronald Koeman at the moment.

Speaking to a group of reporters yesterday, O’Neill elaborated on his press conference criticism of Koeman, in which he accused the Toffees coach of “bleating” about McCarthy.

It is not the first time that there has been a disagreement between Everton and the Irish set-up, with previous Toffees boss Roberto Martinez also becoming involved in a war of words with the Irish management over their handling of Seamus Coleman and James McCarthy.

Most recently, Koeman suggested the Irish set-up were “killing” McCarthy, after the midfielder started Ireland’s recent World Cup qualifiers with Georgia and Moldova, despite doubts about his fitness prior to the double-header.

O’Neill particularly took issue with the fact that McCarthy trained for Everton and featured off the bench against Man City less than a week after the Moldova game.

I was surprised, because James played the game,” O’Neill said. “He declared himself fit for a start and the injury he had wouldn’t have affected him. The only thing that would affect him would be tiredness. He got through the first game (against Georgia).

“I thought he was starting to labour in the second match (against Moldova), which was no surprise to me. We took him off in the game, but he left us pain-free.

“The next thing you know, I hear (Everton) talking about us overloading him. He trained on the Thursday, the very day that (Ronald Koeman) was talking (to the media), I spoke to James and he said ‘I trained today’.

So James is in a difficult situation because Everton pay his wages, I understand that, and he’s first and foremost an Everton player. But when it comes to international duty and he’s fit to play, then he’s got a chance of playing in the games.

“I was surprised about it, this idea that we ‘killed’ him. Well, he did brilliant to recover then, (he’s) Lazarus, amazing.”

O’Neill also rejected the notion that playing the Ireland games contributed to McCarthy’s latest hamstring injury and said the Irish medical team were disappointed with Koeman’s comments.

“He played on the Saturday (against Man City). If I was a manager, I’d be excruciatingly embarrassed about it — to turn around and blame someone for playing him.

And by the way, Seamus Coleman played for us, he didn’t play against Oman, but he played out in Serbia and that was his first game for a while, that game did him the world of good to play for Everton the following week. I didn’t hear them say ‘you played him in the game’.

“How can you come out and say the player’s been killed, he’s been overloaded, and then you play him on the Saturday? It’s nonsense.”

O’Neill went on to suggest McCarthy was being put under undue pressure by his club, but emphasised that he remains deeply committed to the Irish team.

“Generally, players like to play. James would want to play for us and Everton. He has to try to make his way back into the Everton side when he’s injury-free at the end of it all. He didn’t seem to be in the side recently there.

So you’re asking a manager about a situation that I would go and check first of all, whether the players trained and whether you’re thinking about using them for this Saturday before you start talking about the player being ‘killed’ and his latest injury has nothing to do with us.

“I do not play players who are not fit and in fact, I have been so cautious about that because I was a club manager myself. At the end of the day, James had not done a lot of work and that is true, but he felt fine. He had played with us and felt fine in the games.

If he’d been feeling the injury, he wouldn’t have played the first game, but he got through the game, and he was able to start the second match.

“I spoke to Roberto Martinez when he was at Everton, the physiotherapist, I’ve had conversations with our doctor. I think our medical team are pretty disappointed with the (Koeman) comments that are emanating, because obviously the manager will be getting something from their physiotherapist.”

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