Few of the numbers that might be used to pick this game apart will appear to back him up with Serbia having dominated in terms of possession and chances created but the 1-1 scoreline suggested the two teams were level at the Red Star stadium and Martin O’Neill insisted afterwards that his side had deserved their share of the spoils.

"It's a point that we definitely deserved," he said after Daryl Murphy's late goal had earned Ireland a precious point. "He will take great confidence from that and probably take it on to club level too so I'm delighted for him and for the team. Jeff Hendrick (the other Irish scorer) will take great confidence from that as well.

“The pitch was suitable, although it wasn’t great for Serbia, who can pass the ball a bit, either. It was coming up in chunks. There was a lot of rain but I don’t think it was ever going to be called off. It was cutting up then as you would have seen. I knew there would be big chunks out of it and it definitely played a part in proceedings all night long but for Serbia as well.”

They, it seemed, had the better of things after that dramatic early goal for Ireland but O’Neill was adamant that his players had held their own in the way that they needed to.

“I don’t see it like that,” he said when asked whether the visitors had sat back too much and brought trouble on themselves and whether they might have done better to push forward more even when they held the lead. “The game doesn’t go like that. We’ve scored the goal early in the match, we obviously had a couple of half chances to make it two but then the pressure was on Serbia to chase the game and they put us under a lot of pressure.

“It might have looked like we tried to sit in but it was only because we couldn’t get the ball. They’re a very good side. They got the first goal and then the penalty, I don’t know whether you’ve seen that back, it might have been a soft one, or maybe it was a penalty, it doesn’t matter, the referee was always going to give it.

“The important thing, though, is that we came roaring back to get the point.”

Predictably, his opposite number, Slavoljub Muslin, saw things a little differently. “We held the ball better,” he said, “we had more chances, we were the team that was attacking. We absolutely deserved more than one point but that’s football.”