Player of the match Festy Ebosele felt the players had the "full confidence" that Ireland were going to get the win that was required against Armenia.
Evan Ferguson's eight goal for his country after 70 minutes was enough to get the job done against an Armenian side who will rue the sending off of their influential skipper Tigran Barseghyan for a straight red card earlier in the second half.
Manager Heimir Hallgrimsson had called for a scrappy win, well in fairness he did use more coarse language to describe that objective. He watched on as Ireland delivered a rather disjointed performance in the opening 45, sitting back against opposition who were much more fluent in their passing and were bossing the possession stakes.
Festy Ebosele is named as the Player of the Match as Ireland beat the ten-men of Armenia 1-0 to keep their faint World Cup qualification hopes alive. pic.twitter.com/DS1nOoPejg
— RTÉ Sport (@RTEsport) October 14, 2025
Ebosele deservedly received his accolade and his relief was obvious afterwards, when speaking to RTÉ Soccer Correspondent Tony O'Donoghue.
"We really need this win and we came out and done what we needed to do," said the Wexford-born winger.
"There are no easy games in international football so we had to keep fighting and that's what we did. We tried and tried and their keeper made some very good saves but we had full confidence we were going to win today."
There was some surprise when Ebosele was subbed off along with Seamus Coleman on 65 minutes, but the 23-year-old said it was a case of needs must.
"We needed some more fresher legs to get the job done and the subs that came on were amazing," he added, while also saying that hogged the touch line for the remaining minutes "trying to keep the players motivated".
As for the sending off, the İstanbul Basaksehir player said to no great surprise that the dismissal "really helped us", but added that "even without the red card we were still knocking, still pushing, we wanted to get that win."
