The highly rated creative midfielder has been sidelined all season so far after sustaining a serious ankle injury in pre-season.
But after a lengthy spell of recovery and rehabilitation, the 18-year-old is poised to make his comeback with Barry-Murphy confirming he will be involved in Monday’s matchday squad for the trip to Merseyside, a game which CITY+ subscribers can watch live.
“Nico O’Reilly, who is one of our biggest talents, will be back in action on Monday,” the EDS head coach confirmed.
“It will be his comeback after four months out with a serious injury and that will be good to see.
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“It will be a big occasion for him as he got a really serious injury.
“Nico has been on most people’s radar and it be exciting to see him back.”
It has been a testing season so far for our Under-21s.
Champions for the last three seasons running, we will go into Monday’s game in the unfamiliar position of being at the bottom of the table.
Last time out in our first game of 2024, the City youngsters lost 5-1 away to Stoke with Mahamadou Susoho also sent off.
However, with a strong squad at his disposal, Susoho excepted, the City head coach is looking for a positive reaction on Monday.
“We’ve been doing reasonably well apart from the result against Stoke last time out which was one of our poorest performances,” Barry-Murphy added.
“We just didn’t play well at Stoke so we are looking to bounce back and show that we can be competitive, and I think we can.
“You will see Micah (Hamilton), Joel (Ndala) and Jacob (Wright), who have all been around the first team, so it should be the best team we have had in a while apart from Mahamadou, so we should be competitive.”
