\n<\/p>\n
Belief that Northern Ireland could seal second place ahead of Slovakia surged after they were comfortably the superior team when the sides met in Belfast last month, winning 2-0 with a performance that record goalscorer David Healy said was perhaps their best ever under O’Neill.<\/p>\n
In the weeks since, however, there is a growing feeling that the tables have turned somewhat.<\/p>\n
Slovakia were missing influential pair Stanislav Lobotka and David Hancko for the game at Windsor Park, with both expected to be back in Francesco Calzona’s starting line-up at the Kosice Football Arena this time around. <\/p>\n
Northern Ireland, however, will be without three-quarters of the midfield that so impressed in the reverse fixture, with Shea Charles and Ali McCann injured while Ethan Galbraith is suspended.<\/p>\n
How the manager fills such considerable holes in his line-up has been the key talking point since his squad was confirmed last week.<\/p>\n
In Napoli’s Lobotka, O’Neill believes Slovakia can again call upon one of the best defensive midfielders in Europe.<\/p>\n
“He’s an excellent player and he plays at the top level with Napoli, but we look at Slovakia as a team, we don’t look at them as one player or two players,” he said.<\/p>\n
“It won’t change the way Slovakia try and play. We have to deal with that as a team, it’s not one individual player.<\/p>\n
“We don’t envisage any dramatic change in their strategy or how they look to play tactically, but they’ll obviously be stronger.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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Belief that Northern Ireland could seal second place ahead of Slovakia surged after they were comfortably the superior team when the sides met in Belfast last month, winning 2-0 with a performance that record goalscorer David Healy said was perhaps their best ever under O’Neill. In the weeks since, however, there is a growing feeling<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1096,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1095","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-football"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1095","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1095"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1095\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1096"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1095"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1095"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1095"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}