Bulgaria vs Northern Ireland: Michael O'Neill urges 'sensible approach' to emerging youngsters
Michael O'Neill insists it is crucial that Northern Ireland adopts a "sensible approach" with the country's emerging young prospects.
The average age of O'Neill's side that beat Luxembourg on Thursday night was 24 years and three months, highlighting a new recruitment blueprint following some high-profile retirements including Steven Davis, Stuart Dallas and Jonny Evans.
Optimism is starting to rise among the Green and White Army, with Thursday's performance and result raising expectations heading into Sunday's clash with Bulgaria.
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Liverpool's Conor Bradley has become a pivotal talisman for O'Neill, alongside the likes of Shea Charles, Trai Hume and Dan Ballard who scored against Luxembourg.
O'Neill has warned against any over-confidence, but says fans should feel excited about his emerging squad.
"We'll definitely need the fans' help along the way. When you have young players in the team, you always have something to be positive about," he said.
"Where we set the bar for these players, we have to be, not realistic, but sensible. We have to be sensible with it. The average age of the team was just over 24 on Thursday night, I'm looking at our group of players and some of them are already very close to having 20 international caps, and they're 20 years of age.
"So, if you look two years down the line they're going to be at 30-plus international caps, they're going to develop experience. It mightn't be until they are 23-24 that we really see them at their best, and in that period of time, we don't know where they are going to be with their clubs.
"So there are a lot of variables in any young player's situation. We kind of know that by the time you get to the stage of 26-27, you're like Paddy McNair, if you're not playing for Middlesbrough you're going to be playing for someone else.
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"For a lot of these lads, their careers at this minute and the level it can go to is a little bit unknown. But what I do know is, I see characteristics in all of them that makes me think they can play at the top level of the game and if you have players playing at the top level, obviously you've a better chance at international level.
"We still have players from League One playing, it's a big jump and they're still very young. You look at Callum (Marshall, 19), he's on loan at Huddersfield from West Ham, we have to look at him like that.
"If I was a fan, I'd be positive about what we're seeing from the younger players."
O'Neill admits there was an "element of relief" with Thursday's win over Luxembourg. It was only Northern Ireland's second victory in 17 Nations League games, and leaves them top of the early standings in League C3.
Now the international boss says the focus is on making it back-to-back successes when they take on Bulgaria in Plovdiv on Sunday.
"There's always relief and, yeah, I was a little bit worried. It was a difficult week, we didn't have many players to choose from once we lost a few," he said.
"We lost Brodie Spencer, Jordan Thompson, Jamie Reid and Conor McMenamin, that's four players out and then we lost Caolan Boyd-Munce and Eoin Toal. We don't carry a huge depth to our squad. We brought Corry Evans in for his experience, but he's without a club and he hasn't played any minutes, it would be unrealistic to ask him to go onto the pitch for any length of time.
"Yeah, there's alway a sense of relief, but I felt going into the game that we would get a good performance. The key now, with a quick turnaround, is to see if we can do it back-to-back, I think that's a big part in any qualification, you're going to have to put back to back results and performances together.
"We did it in March, which was really encouraging against Romania and Scotland away, and hopefully we can replicate that today."
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