News Round-Up: Republic of Ireland defender Steve Carr is reported to be on the verge of missing this summer's World Cup finals after the recurrence of a long-standing knee injury forced him to pull out of a Tottenham Hotspur training session yesterday.

According to London's Evening Standard yesterday, Carr broke down during the session and it appears that the latest setback is serious enough to rule him out of Republic of Ireland manager Mick McCarthy's plans for the tournament in Japan.

The new injury problem is an enormous blow to the 25-year-old, who had been making good progress in training since knee specialist Dr Richard Steadman operated on him several months ago in the United States.

At the time, the surgery had appeared to rekindle the Dubliner's hopes of playing at the World Cup. Doctors at White Hart Lane had tried a number of different treatments but it was not until the intervention of Steadman, who has established a strong reputation for treating problems of this type, that any serious improvement was seen.

In recent weeks Carr, who earned his 18th international cap when Ireland won 2-0 in Estonia last June, had resumed full training at Spurs. Last week, he predicted on his own website that he was in line to make a return to action for the club's reserves against Charlton Athletic.

Just when that seemed be within his grasp, however, it appears that the original injury has returned.

If the news is as bad as it appeared to be yesterday - neither Carr nor McCarthy were available to comment last night - then it will represent a serious blow to McCarthy, who said last month that he would give the right back every opportunity to establish his fitness before he named his World Cup squad.

In the build-up to victory in the friendly against Russia at Lansdowne Road, McCarthy made it clear that he would require Carr to play no more than a couple of first team games before he would consider including him.

The absence of Carr from the autumn's games against Cyprus, the Netherlands and Iran, however, gave Fulham's Steve Finnan an opportunity to press his claim as an alternative to Carr and Leeds United's Gary Kelly.

Finnan's impressive performances will lessen the blow if McCarthy ends up having to do without the man who had, prior to last summer, had clearly established himself as the number one choice in the position.