Northern Ireland star Jonny Evans has stated that seeded teams should fear them for the World Cup qualifying playoffs.

Northern Ireland are among the four unseeded teams heading into the World Cup qualifying playoffs draw on October 17 where they are set to come up against one of either Portugal, Switzerland, Italy, Croatia or Denmark. Ahead of the draw, defender Evans has stated that the aforementioned teams should fear the Green and White Army.

He said: “We're a real hard-working team, we defend really well as a unit, we all work hard for each other and that's not nice to play against.

“We've got a good defensive record throughout the campaign, we're disappointed conceding a goal (against Norway), it would have been nice to have the eight clean sheets.

“A lot of teams will fear us. Every team that plays us talks about our strength on set pieces and being hard to break down. There's a fine balance between underestimating and being fearful.

“I think teams will cover all aspects and will look at us and see we are good at set pieces – but they haven't been able to deal with it up until now, and that's just one aspect of our game, they can't handle us on set plays."