WITH three important players suspended and Gareth McAuley and Niall McGinn injury doubts, Northern Ireland are going to have to qualify for Euro 2016 the hard way.
But no-one ever said it was going to be easy and manager Michael O’Neill was showing no signs of pre-game nerves when he announced his squad for the final two group games on Tuesday.
“I’m very confident because we are sitting top of the group with a home game against Greece to come,” said O’Neill.
“We need to win one out of two games. If someone had given us that option 12 months ago, we would have snapped their hand off. At the very worst, we are guaranteed a play-off so, all round, if we aren't confident now, we’ll never be confident.”
O’Neill’s squad for the home game against Greece (October 8) and the trip to Finland (October 11) includes one new face in Liverpool’s Ryan McLaughlin, who is currently playing his football for Aberdeen. Suspended trio Chris Baird, Conor McLaughlin and top scorer Kyle Lafferty, whose goals have propelled the North to the top of Group F, a point ahead of Hungary and four ahead of Romania, are also named.
One more win will guarantee qualification, no matter what Hungary manage in their last two fixtures – home to the Faroe Islands and away to Greece. O’Neill says his team has “two bites at the cherry”, but he wants everything settled before the trip to Helsinki.
“I think we have to win it [the game against Greece],” he said.
“We have to be sensible as well. The big thing about the Hungary game is that the consequence of losing the game [the North salvaged a draw thanks to a late goal from Lafferty] would have been quite substantial in terms of how the group would have tightened up. We’re now in the situation where we get two bites at the cherry and we’d be foolhardy not to try and do it at the first attempt and that’s the approach that we’ll take.
“We’ll go out as we have in all the games – particularly all the home games – with a tactical approach to try and win. We did that against Hungary and I thought we were the better team on the night, it wasn’t a game we felt we were going to lose until we lost the goal and Michael [McGovern, goalkeeper] made the mistake. But the reaction of the team was fantastic – if we get that type of reaction again, we know we’re more than capable of winning the game.”
O’Neill said he has watched Hamilton Academical goalkeeper McGovern twice since his fumble gifted Hungary their goal at Windsor Park. He may keep his place, but defensive lynchpin McAuley may not be available – he didn’t feature in West Brom’s 3-2 defeat to Everton on Monday night. However, O’Neill is optimistic the WBA defender will be fit for October 8 and he has Aaron Hughes and Paddy McNair for cover.
Meanwhile, Greece, the top seeds, have managed a miserly three points in their campaign but all three have come on the road from draws in Finland, Hungary and Romania. O’Neill admits he has been surprised by their performances in qualifying, but expects them to try and salvage some pride.
“You’re not a pot one team for no reason and you look at the clubs they are dotted around – for example, Olympiakos are playing in the Champions League and you’re going to see Greek players playing at that level of football,” he said.
“Some play in Germany, some play in Italy, so they have a lot of good players playing at a very high level of European club football. I think this has been a bad campaign, I don’t think they’re a bad team and sometimes that happens.
“The coach situation hasn’t helped that and they have lost all four home games, which I think is extremely unusual because Greece would be somewhere you’d always expect to be a tough place to go.
“This will be every bit as difficult as any of the games we’ve had so far and they’ll want to salvage some pride.”
Northern Ireland squad
Goalkeepers: R Carroll (Notts County), M McGovern (Hamilton Academicals), A Mannus (St Johnstone); Defenders: A Hughes (Melbourne City), C Baird (Derby County), G McAuley (WBA), J Evans (WBA), C Cathcart (Watford), S Ferguson (Newcastle Utd), C McLaughlin (Fleetwood Town), P McNair (Manchester Utd), L Hodson (MK Dons); Midfielders: S Davis (Southampton), C Brunt (WBA), C Evans (Blackburn Rovers), O Norwood (Reading), Pat McCourt (Luton Town), S Dallas (Leeds Utd), R McLaughlin (Liverpool, on loan at Aberdeen); Forwards: K Lafferty (Norwich City), J Magennis (Kilmarnock), W Grigg (Wigan Athletic), N McGinn (Aberdeen), J Ward (Nottingham Forest), B McKay (Wigan Athletic, on loan at Dundee Utd), L Boyce (Ross County).
