{"id":405793,"date":"2026-04-18T23:04:08","date_gmt":"2026-04-18T23:04:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/405793\/"},"modified":"2026-04-18T23:04:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-18T23:04:08","slug":"malta-2-4-northern-ireland-what-did-we-learn-from-michael-mcardles-first-two-games-in-charge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/405793\/","title":{"rendered":"Malta 2-4 Northern Ireland: What did we learn from Michael McArdle&#8217;s first two games in charge?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">While McArdle will be satisfied with what he has managed to extract from his players in a short space of time, he will know there are still areas of improvement.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The caveat of NI&#8217;s two impressive performances is that they came against a Malta side ranked 39 places below them in the world rankings.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Tougher tests are round the corner in June with a must-win game away to Turkey and a home fixture against the top seeds Switzerland.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">McArdle will want his side to tighten up defensively for those games given they handed Malta multiple opportunities home and away, which a better side may have punished more.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Jackie Burns made one big save in the second half of the home game &#8211; denying Haley Bugeja&#8217;s goal bound effort by tipping it onto the crossbar. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">She thwarted Bugeja again on Saturday while NI gave away two poor goals with poor defending from the corner in which Maria Farrugia netted, and a defensive mix-up allowing Leah Ayres to net a consolation.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">McArdle will know they can ill-afford similar slip-ups in June, but, given the work he has done already to fix a misfiring attack, he will be confident he can shore up a defence and help NI build on the solid foundations laid in his first two games.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"While McArdle will be satisfied with what he has managed to extract from his players in a short&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":405794,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,60,43],"class_list":{"0":"post-405793","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ireland","8":"tag-ie","9":"tag-ireland","10":"tag-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/405793","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=405793"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/405793\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/405794"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=405793"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=405793"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=405793"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}