Denmark boss Age Hareide has told Martin O’Neill to remember the good times as he battles to turn around the Republic of Ireland’s dismal run of form.
Ireland will run out against the Danes in Aarhus on Monday evening having already been relegated to Nations League C and desperate to improve upon a run of only one win in eight attempts in 2018.
That has piled the pressure on O’Neill, who celebrated five years in charge earlier this month, although former Manchester City and Norwich team-mate Hareide, who clinched top spot in League B’s Group 4 with Friday’s win in Wales, had words of comfort for him.
The Norwegian, who once went eight games without a win in charge of his native country, said: “Sometimes you get into series of bad results and it’s hard to get out in many ways.
“When you are a coach, you desperately want to change it to get it the right way. But if you have bad run, you have to think of the days you had good run and you have to try to do things you did when things went the right way.
“If Wales scored first in Wales, they could have won group, it’s so tight, and they had chances to do it and we know that.
“You have to look at that every time you win a game, every time you get a result, you have to look at how easy it is to turn it all around. It could be the other way.
“Sometimes football is hard on the managers and sometimes it’s hard because the luck is against you in many ways.
“I know he is working very, very hard to try to change the luck and that’s why we have to be on our tiptoes tomorrow.”
By contrast, Denmark head into their fourth meeting with O’Neill’s men in a little more than 12 months boasting an enviable record.
They have lost only once in two years – barring a 3-0 friendly defeat by Slovakia in which they fielded a team of third division and futsal players amid a row over image rights – and that was on penalties to eventual-finalists Croatia at the World Cup in Russia.
However, Hareide will not allow his players to rest on their laurels.
He said: “Football is sometimes very strange. Wales were in the semi-final of the European Championships in France a couple of years ago; Ireland were in the last 16 and made it very, very hard for the World Cup winners France to beat them.
“That is a good example for our side to keep our performances going because results change the minds of the players, so you have to be very, very careful at international level.
“We talked about that just today and that is why we have to keep our feet on the ground, keep working, keep getting results because they will judge us only after that. A side will grow with good results and a side will lose the balance with bad results.”