Dion Charles says no one in the Northern Ireland squad will be getting carried away ahead of Monday’s Nations League clash in Luxembourg despite convincing victories over Bulgaria and Belarus in their last two outings.
Michael O’Neill’s men approach the match against Luxembourg knowing they can top their group and earn promotion by avoiding defeat but Bolton striker Charles insists they won’t take the match versus the bottom team in the table for granted.
Charles scored a penalty in Friday’s 2-0 home win over Belarus and was superb in the 5-0 Windsor Park success last month against Bulgaria – two results which has the Green and White Army dreaming of bigger things.
For the Northern Ireland team it is one game at a time.
“We can’t afford to get too carried away, we just have to take it game by game,” said Charles.
“We’re building confidence and we’re showing some good stuff though we still have plenty to work on.
“We’re a really young group but we’re really hungry and we just want to be successful.
“The results recently have given us confidence, but some of us are still relatively new to international football so we have to keep building on it.
“It’s important that we keep performing each time we’re out on the pitch and improving.
“When we came in for this campaign the objective was to improve and we’re doing that.”
Unlike the battering of Bulgaria in October when Northern Ireland had won the game by the half hour mark, O’Neill’s young side had to be patient and didn’t make the breakthrough until the second half through Daniel Ballard with a clinical spot-kick from Charles sealing the deal.
“We knew as long as we could stay in the game we would get chances,” said Charles.
“We are a young squad but we’re very athletic and we’re able to keep going right to the end.
“We knew the game wasn’t going to be won in the first half.”
On the penalty which was awarded after an intervention from VAR, Charles said: “I love taking penalties. Everyone looks at you in the stadium and thankfully I hit the back of the net.
“I thought the fans were brilliant at Windsor on Friday. They spur us on and give us that extra 10% to run that bit harder and it’s great to be able to repay them.”