Goalkeeper Maik Taylor believes Northern Ireland need to take at least five points from their final three matches to make the dream of qualifying for next year’s World Cup Finals a reality.

“We have three tough games to go,” admitted the 37 year-old, who won his 77th cap on Wednesday night.

“We obviously have to win our home game against Slovakia, who now seem to be the group favourites, and if we can avoid defeat in Poland and in the Czech Republic then there is a real chance that we can finish in the top two.

“It’s such a strange group; no-one would have thought that Slovakia would go and win in the Czech Republic and it just goes to show how hard it is to predict the results of any of the other matches.”

The Birmingham City keeper’s clean sheet against Slovenia was his fourth of the campaign but he modestly puts this down to having such an experienced back-four in front of him.

“The defence have been excellent throughout the campaign,” he added. “Even when we lost Gareth (McAuley) and George (McCartney) the other night Chris Baird and Ryan McGivern stepped in and did a terrific job for us.

“There were a lot of tired legs in the first half against Slovenia, which is not surprising considering the effort we put in on Saturday against the Poles.

“At half-time though Nigel told us we needed to up our game if we wanted to get anything out of the match and we did that and to be fair we looked the more likely team to score.”

Taylor admitted the Windsor Park crowd also had an effect on the players and the eventual outcome of the match.

“I know we keep harping on about how good they are but they showed again how vital they are to us and there vocal support against Slovenia maybe got that extra ten percent out of the player’s legs which kept us going forward and helped us get the result,” he said.