Michael O’Neill might level to particular person and collective errors after Northern Ireland misplaced 4-0 to Finland of their penultimate Euro 2024 qualifier however the inexperience of his younger squad performed a significant function in Helsinki.
Northern Ireland performed properly for a lot of the primary half however fell behind to Joel Pohjanpalo’s penalty simply earlier than the break, and Daniel Hakans then doubled the lead three minutes into the second half earlier than substitutes Teemu Pukki and Robin Lod added to the rating late on.
Ross McCausland made his debut from the beginning solely days after being drafted in as harm cowl on Monday, and there was additionally a late debut for Michael Forbes with O’Neill making an attempt to make up for the raft of lacking gamers.
But it was a sadly acquainted story as O’Neill’s males have been unable to capitalise on early possibilities earlier than being punished on the different finish.
“We played very well for 40 minutes in the game I thought,” O’Neill mentioned. “We had a plan to make ourselves tough to beat and to include Finland and we did it very properly, I can’t bear in mind them having any alternatives in that interval…
“We created one or two half chances we could have done better with. Then the penalty, for all the work you do in the first 40 minutes you end up going in 1-0 down at half-time because of a penalty.”
Isaac Price clipped Nikolai Alho on the sting of the field earlier than Pohjanpalo despatched Conor Hazard the flawed means.
“Probably it’s a challenge he’s better off not attempting,” O’Neill mentioned. “There’s not a whole lot of contact however there’s sufficient. The participant wasn’t actually ready to shoot, we might presumably have been ready to block the shot…
“I was really pleased with the first 40 minutes but obviously by 48 minutes you’re in a really difficult position.”
Hakans’ strike was in some ways the killer blow, coming so early within the second half. The Valerenga winger skipped by 4 challenges earlier than exchanging passes with Glen Kamara, beating Hazard at his close to publish.
O’Neill was upset along with his stand-in goalkeeper, but in addition accepted extra skilled gamers may need stopped the run by truthful means or foul a lot farther from objective.
“It’s a shot that I would not expect to beat my goalkeeper at the near post,” O’Neill mentioned.
“You have to recognise the danger and there’s points in the game where maybe you have to make a technical foul as they call it and we didn’t do that. I felt probably that was something that if I was to be critical of, we didn’t win enough of those types of challenges through the 90 minutes.”
When Finland then launched Pukki off the bench, with the previous Norwich striker scoring the third and creating the fourth, the sport shortly went away from Northern Ireland.
“That has been the big difference, the attacking players some of the opposition have had and we saw that tonight with goals three and four,” O’Neill mentioned.
“We’ve obtained a bunch of gamers the place a whole lot of them are new to worldwide soccer. This is their first marketing campaign. They’re coming into video games and the video games are going away from them. As a supervisor I’ve to help them and again them.
“They have to learn on the job and they’re having to learn quickly.”
The excellent news is that this depressing qualifying marketing campaign is sort of over, with solely Monday’s match at house to Denmark remaining.
“When you come out of a defeat you look at the game from a tactical point of view and a performance point of view but what’s most important as a staff and a coach and a group of players is that people don’t question your character or mentality,” O’Neill mentioned.
“That’s what we have to show again on Monday night.”
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