Cautious O’Neill plans to attack a place in Euro Finals

Martin O’Neill wants Ireland to attack their way into a place in next year’s European Championship finals in France.

Last night’s 1-1 away to Bosnia gives Ireland the comfort of knowing that a 0-0 draw in the Aviva Stadium on Monday night will secure qualification.

Robbie Brady’s goal in the 82^nd minute looked set to give Ireland a first leg advantage but three minutes Edin Dzeko levelled for the home side.

The qualifying road has been long and testing for the former Celtic boss who now faces a night of expectation to join the party in France next summer.

“The onus is on us now,” O’Neill admitted. “We will have to try to win because I feel that Bosnia are capable of scoring a goal and therefore I think our mindset should be to try to win the game.

“I don’t think we can sit – we were away tonight against a very good Bosnia side and obviously against the crowd, but we will attempt to attack more during the course of the second game.

“That would be our objective if we can. We have got an away goal, which helps, but that can be wiped out in any given minute.

“It was a tough game for us, really tough, but we fought very, very strongly in the game and we are still in the tie, so there’s very much everything to play for.”

The second half of last night’s match was played out with fog threatening an abandonment but thankfully the 90 minutes was completed.

“I obviously was concerned,” O’Neill admitted. “The fog came down and looked as if it was deepening in the second half for a period of time.

“What I didn’t know until afterwards there was if the game had been called off, that we’d only come back for the rest of the game tomorrow.

“The rules beforehand used to be that you would come back for all of the game, so from that viewpoint since we had played the first half and the game was still goalless, if I had known that, it wouldn’t have been too bad to have come back.

“But the fog didn’t get any worse after about 15 minutes of the second half and if the referee, I suppose, saw fit to start the second half with the fog deepening, then he obviously saw fit to keep the game going.”