Martin O’Neill: We must treat this game as a must win

With Austria four points behind joint leaders Serbia and Ireland in Group D, the conventional wisdom has it that nothing less than a victory in Sunday’s game at the Aviva will be enough to resuscitate the visitors’ flagging World Cup qualifying hopes.

Martin O’Neill wouldn’t necessarily disagree with that analysis, but he does have major reservations about what it might seem to imply about the kind of approach Ireland should adopt. In short, while Sunday’s game might not be regarded as a must win for his team, he insists it’s vital that his players treat it as precisely that.

“Look at the mindset of Austria coming here,” he says, animatedly. “They probably never thought they would lose three points to us in the game in Vienna and now, suddenly, they are thinking about coming and having to win the game here. What we don’t want to do is get into a mindset that because they have to win, that we can hit them on the break. We just have to dismiss that.