Martin O’Neill: We can handle Christian Eriksen

In preparing to face the threat of Danish dangerman Christian Eriksen in the World Cup play-off, Martin O’Neill believes his players are entitled to take encouragement from how they coped in the recent past with other standout stars like Zlatan Ibrahimovic, Gareth Bale and the Bosnian duo of Edin Dzeko and Miralem Pjanic.

“I think Eriksen has become as important to Denmark as Gareth Bale is to Wales and he is certainly of that ilk,” said the Ireland manager after unveiling his latest squad yesterday. “My own view is that if you are talking about Messi and Ronaldo being the two outstanding players in the world, then Bale is in that little group behind them that includes Hazard, Suarez, Neymar, all of those players. And Eriksen in his last year, both for club and country, has put himself into that sort of category. I can’t pay him a much higher compliment.”

So having identified the scale of the challenge represented by the Spurs man, how should O’Neill’s team go about counteracting it? Man-marking, it seems, is not the manager’s preferred solution.