Kane’s goalscoring feats came only after a number of frustrating loan spells away from Tottenham earlier in his career with Donley presently enduring similar struggles. <\/p>\n
Having impressed at Leyton Orient last season, and made his international debut while with the Brisbane Road club, he has found things tougher in the Championship with Stoke this year.<\/p>\n
Since the start of September, he has played only 37 club minutes, which in turn has hampered his international prospects.<\/p>\n
Born in Northern Ireland but raised in England, Donley represented both at youth level and it was viewed as a real coup when O’Neill convinced him to turn out in a green jersey at senior level in March. Yet Monday represented his first start since that initial international window with the squad.<\/p>\n
O’Neill thinks Donley has been “unlucky” not to have won more than six senior caps, but believes you can always see his Premier League quality.<\/p>\n
“He just looks like that player that has been at a high level as a young player at a club like Tottenham all his days,” he said.<\/p>\n
“Obviously he’s still a Tottenham player at this minute in time. He’s just got himself in a situation where his loan has not gone as well as he’d hoped. <\/p>\n
“That’s happened to many players. Many players have gone through that situation where the loan is not always a success, but they learn from that as well. He’s only 20 years of age, so he’s got it all ahead of him.”<\/p>\n
Such has been Donley’s struggle for regular football this season that he dropped back down to the Northern Ireland Under-21s as recently as last month. <\/p>\n
Yet, on the most recent evidence, he is now in pole position to start what will be the country’s biggest game in at least five years come the play-off in March.<\/p>\n
O’Neill hopes the “situation resolves itself” in the coming months, while Donley believes his international progress can aid his club prospects – in turn helping his chances of holding on to Northern Ireland’s number nine jersey.<\/p>\n
“I think I need to be playing at my club to have any chance of playing in March because Michael speaks a lot about that,” he said.<\/p>\n
“I think [the Luxembourg showing] would have helped me if someone from Stoke was watching and seeing that I’ve got a bit of quality. I’ll go back and see what happens.<\/p>\n
“It hasn’t gone the way that I’ve wanted it to but hopefully I can start playing and scoring and that puts me in good stead for the games in March.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Kane’s goalscoring feats came only after a number of frustrating loan spells away from Tottenham earlier in his…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":186842,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[76],"tags":[18,19,17,132],"class_list":{"0":"post-186841","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-eire","9":"tag-ie","10":"tag-ireland","11":"tag-sports"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115569969394138675","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186841","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=186841"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186841\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/186842"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=186841"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=186841"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=186841"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}