The belief (and this is based on the way things had worked in the past, and may still....but I can't confirm) is that it doesn't matter which SWUs you attach to the reservation. As long as it confirms the SWU use prior to the expiration, the "system" will pull the old ones automatically.
Cheers.
This was my impression as well, based on prior experiences. However, on a recent call to change a December 16 flight to March 1, the EXP agent told me that the rate desk (who needed to price the change) actually caught that I had used an expiring (by a single day, no less) eVIP and that they wouldn't be able to process the change without "removing the certificate number and putting the new one in" (her words).
This was a different situation than the one I described above. In that previous situation, I called back, and the EXP agent actually spoke to a supervisor at customer service who made a one-time exception for me and processed the upgrade. The upshot was that this time around, I requested an exception again and they saw that one had already been previously granted and refused to it. Apparently word has been sent down from "AAdvantage HQ" that there will be no exceptions at all this year for anybody (even "21-22 million milers", according to the agent).
So, good luck to those who do manage to get their upgrades done. If you do, please post how you accomplish it (even if it took no extra effort on your part). And if you think you got lucky and the agent went ahead and processed your ticket, be sure to confirm that you got ticketed. This was where things blew up for me first time around.
For what it's worth, over the past few years I have been qualifying on points (paid J international flights, all discounted I-class). My internal revenue/"eagle" rating can't be that high, but I'm sure it's higher than all the super-discounted EQM qualifiers.