Michael O’Neill hopes Northern Ireland youngsters can learn from Kazakhstan loss as he concedes qualification from group is going to be ‘extremely difficult’

Boos greeted the final whistle at Windsor Park after Northern Ireland failed to make their dominance pay and were hit by an 88th-minute breakaway goal from Abat Aimbetov – a moment O’Neill later described as a “sucker-punch”.

With an injury list that stretches into double figures, O’Neill has spent both this international window and the one that preceded it in March leaning heavily on young, inexperienced players.

Many of them have performed admirably – 19-year-old Shea Charles was named man of the match on Monday – but their lack of experience has showed and three consecutive 1-0 losses tell their own story.

Monday night was a difficult pill to swallow, but O’Neill believes it will help a young group, many of whom are not yet regulars at club level let alone international.

“Hopefully the young players realise how cruel international football can be at times,” he said. “And also that a 1-0 defeat in a group like this shows you the margins. You can compete, but then you see how difficult a task we have given ourselves.

“They have to learn that, and how big a win can be as well. If you are playing in development football, like Shea Charles and Isaac Price, the stakes aren’t as high. They are younger players learning the game, and they step into this arena and quickly discover every point is crucial.”

O’Neill stopped short of conceding defeat in Northern Ireland’s bid to quality for Euro 2024, but only just.

“We have to win five games out of six and we have won one out of four,” he said. “I am not going to sit here and say that we have given up or anything like that, but it will be extremely difficult for us to put ourselves in a position to qualify.

“We obviously have to take as much as we can from the last six games in the group…

“I think we have been obsessed with qualification since the minute the tournament was drawn, but the reality is that for us to be in a position to qualify we need our strongest squad available and we need it available as much as possible throughout the campaign. Unfortunately we have not had that.”

Injuries have robbed Northern Ireland of so many of their most experienced campaigners, including Steven Davis, Stuart Dallas, Corry Evans and Josh Magennis.

“It’s probably the worst I’ve experienced in terms of injuries for a qualifying campaign,” O’Neill said.

“We ended up with 10 players that were unavailable for us through injury. This has been quite a challenge for us in March and in June with losing a lot of key players with longer-term injuries.”

O’Neill said he was turning to players who are not yet ready for international football, but the baptism of fire they have been given could pay dividends down the road.

There is now some time to regroup before September, when Northern Ireland face a difficult double-header away from home, travelling first to Slovenia and then Kazakhstan.

“Young players, you want them coming into the international arena excited to be here and excited to play. You don’t want them coming in with a fear of playing or it being a difficult environment for them to play in,” O’Neill said.

“I said to them after the game, we have no option but to stick together. We have to embrace the challenge of going to Slovenia and Kazakhstan, which will be very difficult games.

“We’re in a situation now where whatever we can take from this group, we’ll take the best of the remaining six games.”