Martin O’Neill singles out skipper Seamus Coleman for special praise

Martin O’Neill hailed captain Seamus Coleman but admits Ireland didn’t play well in a nervy 1-0 win over Georgia.

“We’re delighted with the win and obviously we can play better,” said O’Neill,

“I think the players have plenty of confidence, but when you don’t start well and allow the opposition on your own pitch too much time on the ball it takes a while to get back on track. It took us most of the first 45 minutes to do that.

“We pressed. First of all you have to try to press, then you have to try get close enough to the opposition when you do press and we weren’t doing that.

“We came out in the second half and pressed and had a lot of the ball in the second half because we did press.”

O’Neill had particular praise for captain Coleman

“Coleman was excellent and he pulled out that game for us. We’ve had tough games against Georgia against qualifiers in the past, in the last campaign.

“They’ve played very well against us and I’ve said it before - if they had a natural goalscorer in their teams they’d cause a lot too teams a lot of trouble.”

Ireland will be without Jeff Hendrick for Sunday’s Group D after the Burnley man picked up a yellow card and Robbie Brady is also a doubt after his head injury.

But O’Neill couldn’t confirm if Harry Arter would be recalled.

“I think it might be difficult because he’s trying to get over a hamstring problem at the moment,” he said. “It’s not pulled, it’s very tight, but I’ll have a think about that this evening.”

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