As the September international window came to a close and the Ireland squad started to make their way back to their respective clubs, Heimir Hallgrimsson was left to pick up the pieces following a double defeat to begin his tenure.
And already, the new head coach's mind was on next month as he offered his thoughts on the October window, which will come around in a matter of weeks as Ireland hit the road for Helsinki first, before a return trip to Athens for the reverse fixture with the Greeks.
The disappointment of the defeat being reconstituted into a positive narrative of the improvements his side have made since the England performance where he said the team lacked initiative, made poor decisions and struggled with their confidence.
Not a complete fix, however, as Hallgrimsson spoke about the positive play and the improved structure of the team, he still emphasised that the team were lacking confidence.
And following a strong performance, which ended in defeat, there is no doubt in the manager’s mind that the confidence took another hit and it will be the key attribute to work on when the squad meet again next month.
"Goals change games," said Hallgrimsson, as he pondered what might have been had Chiedozie Ogbene just waited a split second longer to make that run behind the defence and handed Ireland the lead with his spectacular strike, which nestled in the top corner before being cruelly, but rightly, wiped out thanks to the linesman’s flag.
"How we played, how we were playing at that moment of the game, and then scoring as a reward of how we had done, would have changed the game and probably changed the confidence as well because we were doing good and we got the reward for it."
"That was a good one, we took that chance. But we had really good openings, really good passing, especially in the first half, good chances to create more than we did, but we didn’t take it."
Looking ahead to the Finland and Greece games, Hallgrimsson believes that an improving Ireland can take points on the road to take into the final two games, which sees the Finns come to Dublin as well as a final away trip to the iconic Wembley Stadium.
And while Hallgrimsson is staying optimistic, he remains realistic regarding the team’s lack of results in recent times and knows that they have to be at their absolute best, while building on the solid structure that they showed for large spells of the Greece encounter.
"Next is to build on what we did good in this game," he said. "I’m repeating myself, but once we were structured, once we were organised, compact, we looked pretty good, solid, denied them chances.
"I think that’s always the first step when building a team. You need to start first in organisation, in the defensive part and then we work from that.
"If that is not good then we can never build a team, so we’ll continue to work on, what I saw at least, was an improvement from the England game, and what I think was an improvement from before.
"We need to play better. I’m not hiding behind that," he added. "We need to play faster, make decisions quicker and use the strength we have like Sammie's [Szmodics] speed and his in behind. We didn’t use it.
"Good passing players need to do it a bit faster. It’s just improvements step by step. That’s impossible to do in one step.
"We need to build what we did well, forget that we lost, but improve on what we did badly. Let’s be realistic."
As for building the confidence back in the team, Hallgrimsson has a good idea on areas which will help restore belief, and perhaps, lessen the weight of the green jersey on his players’ shoulders.
"You need to find confidence in some things. If you can’t find it from winning, then do it from other things and grow from it. That’s the solution.
"We can all agree that Ireland doesn’t have a matchwinner at this stage. We don’t have a Zlatan, Messi or Ronaldo or the high-profile players of the past such as Roy Keane et cetera playing at the highest level.
"If we want to grow, it has to be collective. That is where we should start and our job is to grow. From there, players will be confident from organisation and structure. Defending without the ball, you feel confident. You can control the game without the ball.
"Once that happens, we’ll start to get points and we’ll grow in confidence.
"We gave Evan [Ferguson] more minutes, his first minutes of the season. Hopefully that will help Brighton select him more and he will be a huge asset for us when he’s fit.
"I think we saw that Kasey McAteer is one for the future. He didn’t create but again a lot of positives how he did it in attacking, finding spaces."
Ultimately, Hallgrimsson is looking to build a settled side around a core group of key players, and he cited Tuesday night’s opponents of a perfect example of an experienced unit able to pick up results, even when second best in a game.
"They are tactical, really experienced, they have played a lot of games together, their average age is around 30, so they have played many games together, so they know they will only need a sniff of a chance to win a game.
"That’s for me the positives, if we would have taken a goal, for sure we would have gone on – well I say this now – and won the game."
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