Lauren Wade: Northern Ireland’s patience led us to victory over Montenegro

Montenegro 0 Northern Ireland 2

Northern Ireland's Lauren Wade looks to dribble the ball and move away from Montenegro counterpart Sladjana Bulatovic

Lauren Wade highlighted Northern Ireland’s patience as a key factor in topping off a dominant performance with a richly deserved 2-0 Nations League win over Montenegro.

Wade scored the first goal herself but that breakthrough only came 20 minutes from the end in Podgorica despite Northern Ireland controlling possession for almost the entire game.

Demi Vance’s injury-time strike – and almost identical finish to Wade as she too headed home from the edge of the six yard box – put Tanya Oxtoby’s team in control of the play-off tie and that goal, plus a shortage of attacking threat and quality in the Montenegro performance, will give the manager and her players confidence that they will complete the job in the second leg at Windsor Park on Tuesday.

Frustrating as it was that the dominance couldn’t be turned into clear cut chances, let alone goals, Northern Ireland stayed patient and ultimately secured the victory. Now Wade is craving an even better display on Tuesday as the girls in green look to secure their League B status ahead of next month’s draw for the next Nations League competition.

“All week we have worked on our principles of play and a few of them came out in the game,” said Wade.

“We want to make sure we get a 90-minute performance. We’d a lot of possession and it was just staying in the game and we knew we would get our chance.

“We had to wait 70 minutes but we didn’t panic and we just kept going and kept going and that’s really pleasing to see.

“Tanya has come in, we have been working on our principles and what she wants us to do.

“It’s a building block, we have