David Healy, who has scored more goals for Northern Ireland than any other male player, said he understood why there would be questions asked by Rovers’ relegation rivals, but he did not think that O’Neill would jeopardise any of his players.<\/p>\n
O’Neill will take charge of Blackburn’s final seven games of the season as he looks to steer Rovers clear of relegation, starting at Birmingham City on Friday and at home to West Brom on Monday.<\/p>\n
He said after the game in Italy that he will return to the “status quo” for June’s friendlies, and he has a contract until 2028 with Northern Ireland.<\/p>\n
Going forward, Linfield manager Healy said he “absolutely hopes” O’Neill leads Northern Ireland into the next campaign, and said there is “major hope” for the young team going forward.<\/p>\n
“When you look at it, Michael has rebuilt over the last couple of years. <\/p>\n
“This is a squad full of quality, it’s a squad full of energy. The average age of the group is 22, so it’s only going to get better.<\/p>\n
“I don’t see why Michael can’t get the best out of this group. <\/p>\n
“He’s a Northern Ireland man through and through and he wants Northern Ireland to be at major finals.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"David Healy, who has scored more goals for Northern Ireland than any other male player, said he understood…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":506298,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[218,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-506297","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-football","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/506297","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=506297"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/506297\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/506298"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=506297"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=506297"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=506297"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}