Michael O’Neill confident young Northern Ireland squad can compete in future

Adam Cerin’s free-kick from a debatable early decision was enough to give Slovenia three points that puts them on the brink of reaching Euro 2024, but another inexperienced Northern Ireland side did a good job of stifling their potent attacking force even after Shea Charles’ 58th-minute red card.

It was a familiar story in this campaign, with this Northern Ireland’s fifth 1-0 defeat in eight games – a sign that a side robbed of so many key experienced players has managed to stay in games until the end if not come out on the right side of them.

There have been growing pains, and plenty of them, for a team short not only on international experience but club experience in many cases, but the hope for O’Neill is that it pays off in the campaigns to come.

“I think there is potentially a good team here going forward, but it will take time and we need to be patient with the players,” the manager said.

“Can the players who are playing League One at the minute, can they get to Championship? I don’t think going forward we are going to have a team that is riddled with Premier League players, but it doesn’t mean that we can’t build a team that can compete.”

Northern Ireland lost captain Steven Davis, Stuart Dallas, Corry Evans and Shane Ferguson to long-term injuries before qualifying even began and the problems have mounted up since.

With Daniel Ballard injured and Paddy McNair suspended on Tuesday night, Eoin Toal and Brad Lyons were handed their debuts, taking the number of players used in eight qualifiers to 31.

And as frustrating as the results have been, O’Neill believes the Northern Ireland fans recognised from the start how this campaign might go with so many players out.

“You only have to look at our squad and look at the players who are not here,” O’Neill said. “I think the fans know that it was going to be a really tough challenge to qualify with this group of players.

“If you add the five, six or seven players that we could have had it probably would have made it more achievable but, unfortunately, we lost the game here to Finland [in March] and then we had the situation in Denmark where we are narrowly beaten (and) Kazakhstan we lose in the last minute.

“There have been a lot of things that we can feel a little bit aggrieved about, but these are lads that collectively have 20 club games between them, some of them. They are not international players and we have to recognise that.”

O’Neill said he opted to give Lyons his debut in midfield and leave the much more experienced George Saville on the bench as the Kilmarnock man would offer more balance, while Toal got the nod over Brodie Spencer in the depleted backline as he has much more experience at club level.

O’Neill said he was pleased with how both players did.

“(Lyons) deserved his chance,” he said. “He’s been good since he came in. He’s trained well, and I thought acquitted himself well.

“Eoin can be more than happy with his performance. He had one or two little moments, but overall he was playing against a striker (RB Leipzig’s Benjamin Sesko), who is very highly rated in Europe, a young striker that would be on a lot of clubs’ watchlists at this moment in time.

“He doesn’t play against strikers like that in League One so I think he can be really pleased with how he played.”