Regular club football gives Northern Ireland a boost before Nations League double-header

Northern Ireland manager Michael O’Neill says regular club football is giving his squad a stronger platform as they prepare for Nations League matches against Ukraine and Hungary.

Nine of the 24 players selected for the two fixtures made permanent or loan moves during the summer. Excluding three uncapped players, the squad members have averaged more than 1,000 minutes of club football this season, according to BBC Sport. Only four have started fewer than four games since Northern Ireland’s match against Georgia last month; one, Tom Atcheson, has been carrying an injury.

“There’s a lot of players who are playing on a regular basis at their clubs, which is a real positive,” O’Neill said. He wants more of the squad to progress to the Premier League, saying players in the Championship have the ability to make that step.

Northern Ireland are top of Nations League Group B2 after four games. They face Ukraine on Saturday, 14 November, before hosting Hungary three days later. O’Neill will be without injured defenders Daniel Ballard and Conor Bradley, as well as Arsenal’s Ceadach O’Neill, for this international window.

The manager also pointed to Jamie Donley’s recent club scoring as a confidence boost. The Tottenham loanee has scored three times and provided two assists for League One side Luton Town, where he plays in a deeper role than the false-nine position he occupies for Northern Ireland. O’Neill said the chances Donley gets at Luton were not directly comparable with those at international level, but added that scoring for his club could help him arrive in camp with confidence.

Callum Marshall, another Luton forward, has scored four times in League One since joining from West Ham in the summer, but has featured only once in Northern Ireland’s past five matches and is yet to score for the national team. O’Neill said he had encouraged Marshall to make the move permanent and that the player now had to make the most of his opportunity.