The West Brom ace has been brilliant at international level for his country, scoring a bunch of goals, and he tends to hit the target in honest post-match assessments as well.<\/p>\n
Keeping the ball more in away games going forward was a key takeaway from the trip to Copenhagen for Michael O\u2019Neill\u2019s players.<\/p>\n
Without the ball Northern Ireland worked extremely hard in their 2-1 friendly defeat against a Danish side that had the vast majority of play, but Price appreciates more is required moving forward when in possession.<\/p>\n
With O’Neill’s young side starting their World Cup campaign away to Luxembourg and Germany, the match at Parken provided the team with food for thought knowing they are a much more capable outfit going forward than what they showed at the weekend.<\/p>\n
Quizzed on the possession factor, Price commented: \u201cThe gaffer said about our possession after the match. I think because when you work so hard off the ball and you’re chasing the game a lot, when you finally get the ball you’ve got to be good enough to keep it and manipulate the ball and buy fouls and get time for your team.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat’s definitely something we’ve got to work on, especially when we know we’re going into the World Cup qualifiers where we’re going to play top opposition like Germany. We\u2019ve got to get better at keeping the ball.\u201d<\/p>\n
Denmark made their possession and pressure count in the second half with Christian Eriksen netting the winning goal in the 67th minute.<\/p>\n
At that point Northern Ireland fans were fearing the Danes would pile it on as Sweden did in March on their way to a 5-1 triumph over O\u2019Neill\u2019s team in Stockholm.<\/p>\n
In the first half the visitors had kept Denmark at arm\u2019s length until Gustav Isaksen\u2019s fine strike in injury time, which levelled Pierre-Emile H\u00f8jbjerg\u2019s sixth minute own goal.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Northern Ireland defender Conor Bradley closes in on Denmark’s Gustav Isaksen during the sides’ clash<\/p>\n
Price said: \u201cWe knew what they were going to be like. I think we had a pretty good game plan from the start and we dug in well but their quality shone through in the second half.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt could have quite easily gone like it did in Sweden and gone three, four, five, but we dug in well and kept it at two.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think their equaliser killed us a little bit. We’d worked so hard for 45 minutes and we\u2019ve got our goal, and to concede so late in the first half you’re going into half-time on a little bit of a downer.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a kick in the teeth really, but they\u2019ve got quality players and unfortunately they beat us in the end.\u201d<\/p>\n
If that was disappointing, ex-Everton and Standard Liege player Price was full of praise for team-mate Justin Devenny.<\/p>\n
The 21-year-old Crystal Palace midfielder started in a left wing back role and delivered an impressive performance.<\/p>\n
\u201cI thought Justin was outstanding,\u201d said Price.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe’s playing a different position to what he normally plays. He’s been asked to do a little bit of a different job and I thought defensively he was very good.\u201d<\/p>\n
On Tuesday, Northern Ireland return to action at home to Iceland with Price only thinking about one outcome.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s definitely a game that we’ll look to go and win,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe want more of the ball and to show a little bit more quality when we have the ball.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd it’s at home and I think all the team knows how well we do at home. It gives everyone a little bit of an extra boost. So, yeah, we’ll be going into that game hoping to win.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The West Brom ace has been brilliant at international level for his country, scoring a bunch of goals,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":168131,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5011],"tags":[31133,1144,8538,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-168130","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-northern-ireland","8":"tag-michael-oneill","9":"tag-northern-ireland","10":"tag-northern-ireland-football-team","11":"tag-uk","12":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114648916284855654","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168130","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=168130"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168130\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/168131"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=168130"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=168130"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=168130"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}