Given that it’s a game between promoted and relegated sides, this Nations League match has been widely dismissed as a dead rubber.

Yet, because of the Byzantine nature of the new competition, the result here could still prove to be a factor in Ireland’s chances of making the play-offs, though we won’t be able to say definitively until European Championship qualification proper concludes in a year’s time.

Of much more immediate significance then is Martin O’Neill’s embattled position at the helm as his team bid for an unlikely victory which would be only their second of a thoroughly miserable year.

Asked if, particularly in light of that deflating scoreless draw with Northern Ireland, he thought his job was under threat, the manager declined to rise to the bait.

“The question was asked a number of times and it’s the same answer: you’re in a job where you’re constantly under pressure anyway,” he said.

“That’s the nature of the game: we need to try to win some football matches whether they’re friendly matches or not.”

While his Danish counterpart Age Hareide was understandably only too happy to talk up his team’s roaring form — noting that they have lost only one game (in regulation time) in two years, a defeat which, he didn’t even bother to mention, came when the Danes fielded their futsal team against Slovakia — and have conceded just three goals in 2018, O’Neill, in altogether more defensive mode, launched a stat attack of his own in response to all the grim number-crunching surrounding his team as a forgettable year draws to a close.

“Since I came into this job five years ago, for friendly matches, I’ve wanted to blood players against really tough opposition,” he said.

“I see no benefit whatsoever in getting your stats up and making it something that you’ve gone unbeaten for four or five games.

“Playing games at home that you might win and it goes down as a decent stat — I’ve never been into that.

“If we were looking to try and, what shall I say, put decent stats in, we wouldn’t have chosen in recent times the likes of Turkey away, Poland away, France away from home who went on to win the World Cup. I think we would confine ourselves to playing sides who might not measure up to us.”

And as well as the defiance, there was more than a touch of prickliness too from the manager when, at one point in his pre-match press conference, he interjected before Seamus Coleman could answer a question.

Earlier, Coleman had said of Ireland’s recent struggles: “Look, it’s something that even at club level I’ve said before: players on the pitch have to look for the ball, get angles on the ball. If I’ve the ball and don’t have two or three people looking for it, maybe I’ll give it away and it looks like it was my fault. It’s a collective thing.

“We didn’t look good against Northern Ireland and hopefully we can look a lot better.”

But, a bit later in proceedings, when one journalist sought amplification on those comments from the captain, O’Neill made clear he was having no more of it.

“That’s my responsibility and I think Seamus has answered that a number of times, really,” he said.

“That’s down to me. I’m the manager.”

When the journalist stood his ground and explained that he wanted to ask Coleman what had been done on the training pitch since the Northern Ireland game to try to improve things, O’Neill shot back: “I don’t think you should ask him that, you should ask me that. It is down to me. Seamus is a player, he’s the captain of this side, but he follows instructions from me. So, that’s where we are.”

O’Neill was actually at his most animated when, in the context of discussion about Michael Obafemi’s declaration for the Republic, there was mention of the flak previously directed at the manager for not capping Declan Rice in the World Cup qualifier at home to Moldova.

Where previously he had described the notion of capping a young, untried player in an important competitive game simply to tie him down for the future, as “crazy”, this time he opted for “lunacy” and “absolutely ludicrous”.

However, with Obafemi having now made it unequivocally clear that he is committed to Ireland, O’Neill acknowledged that the 18-year-old’s situation is very different.

Nevertheless, while declining to say whether or not the player will see some action tonight, he did counsel against expecting too much too soon from the young striker.

“Michael looks as if he’s got good talent,” he said.

“He’s a young lad coming through, he’s played in the under-19s, he’s made a couple of substitute appearances for Southampton’s first team and that’s good.

“That means it looks as if at club level, he’s making a bit of progress.

“But he’d be the first one to say he’s a long way to go, a long way to go at this minute, and that would also go for a number of the players that we have here and that we have capped.”