Michael O’Neill says Northern Ireland players ‘got the message’ at half time | OneFootball

Michael O’Neill said his Northern Ireland players “got the message” in his half-time team talk before going on to secure the 3-1 win they needed to start their World Cup qualifying campaign on a positive note.

On the ground where they blew a 2-0 lead to draw 2-2 in the Nations League only 10 months ago, Northern Ireland failed to build on an early goal from Jamie Reid, with O’Neill’s frustration at some poor passages of play obvious long before Aiman Dardari brought Luxembourg level.

But after some home truths in the dressing room at half-time, Northern Ireland needed less than 30 seconds to retake the lead through Shea Charles and, moments after Seid Korac was shown a second yellow card, Justin Devenny scored a decisive third.

“We worked hard this week on our structure and our build-up play,” O’Neill said. “We won’t be a team that will keep the ball and play through the opposition’s press particularly well, we’re better when we play forward quicker and earlier.

“We stopped doing that (in the first half), we didn’t win enough of the one-v-one situations, we didn’t compete enough…

“We were a little bit sluggish after we scored in the first half. We told them they needed to lift it, basically. We needed to play with the structure that we talked about this week.

“I think they got the message clearly at half-time and we got the result and the performance that we wanted in the second half.”

Northern Ireland could have scored twice before Reid tucked in the rebound from Isaac Price’s saved penalty in the seventh minute, with Ali McCann having the first shot at goal before Reid was denied by Anthony Moris.

But having taken the lead Northern Ireland lost control of the game.

“(The goal) gave us a great start but I think we maybe thought the game may have been easy then, and that was the problem,” O’Neill said. “Credit to Luxembourg, they came into the game and the equaliser was coming.

“I felt we didn’t handle the ball well, we dropped a gear and they were deservedly level. We caused a lot of our own problems.”

Northern Ireland looked more settled after the break, and once Luxembourg were reduced to 10 men in the 66th minute there was only going to be one winner.

For Charles and Devenny, who started at left wing-back, these were their first international goals, while it was a first competitive strike for Northern Ireland for Reid.

“We asked Justin to play out of position but I thought he had a very good night,” O’Neill said. “He’s still learning, he has to learn some aspects of that position defensively but what he gives you with the ball is excellent.

“I’m delighted for Jamie because I thought he gave us what we were looking for at the top of the pitch. He was strong, he was physical. He ran behind, he got his chance and he got his goal as a result of that.

“With Shea, it’s good (to see him score) because Shea’s got so much to offer. He needs to get to the edge of the box in those situations and he keeps the shot on target and thankfully it went in.”