Northern Ireland’s injury woes have been a serious test: Michael O’Neill
Michael O'Neill has had a tough start to his second stint as Northern Ireland manager
Craig Cathcart has been training with Watford U21s as he awaits the right offer
Northern Ireland boss Michael O’Neill has spoken about the challenges of dealing with a never ending stream of injuries since returning to the post and underlined why the Euro 2024 qualifying campaign has been a steep learning curve for his young players.
For next month’s group games away to Slovenia and Kazakhstan, as has been the case all year, O’Neill is without the experienced Steven Davis, Stuart Dallas and Corry Evans.
Also sidelined for the double header are Shane Ferguson, Jamal Lewis, Conor Bradley and Aaron Donnelly.
At other times in 2023, O’Neill has been without Jonny Evans, Craig Cathcart, Daniel Ballard, Josh Magennis, Conor Washington, Liam Boyce and Shayne Lavery because of injuries.
Fortune has not favoured the manager second time around and he admits it has not been how he had imagined when he was appointed in December following the sacking of Ian Baraclough.
“I had a team in my head that I thought was probably going to play,” said O’Neill as he announced his latest squad.
“I was excited about the younger players that would be around that team to support it. Maybe I thought in the past that we didn’t have that number of young players but what we have faced in this campaign has meant that those younger players have had to step up sooner than we thought.
“At the time I probably thought Stuart (Dallas) would be back and that has proven to not be the case at this minute in time so there are a lot of challenges there.
“I think there was an appetite within the senior players to have a real go in this campaign and there was a real belief that
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