Pressure eases on Bellamy and his players after win over side in top 20 of FIFA rankings.

Posted on October 2, 2026 by The other Bob Wilson

After giving maybe their worst performance under Craig Bellamy on Sunday when they were beaten 2-0 in Denmark, Wales produced one of their best under this manager in beating eighteenth in the world ranked Norway 2-1 at Cardiff City Stadium tonight to record a first Group A win in the Nations League.

They were helped along the way by a Norwegian red card within seconds of the restart after half time, but that came about through another example of the visiting defence being driven to distraction by an aggressive Welsh forward press which suggested they could get something out of a game in which they conceded after ten minutes.

Given the low key nature of the performances in Lisbon and Copenhagen, going 1-0 down so early with the manager under the most pressure he has seen since his appointment, things could have got pretty fraught. However, with Sorba Thomas giving a second successive Welsh Man of the match display, Dan James running him close on the opposite flank and the tireless Lewis Koumas again impressing, Wales gave the Norwegian keeper and defence, which seems to me to be the weakest part of an impressive, emerging team, plenty to think about.

City players Joel Colwill and Cian Ashford were on the bench this time with the former getting a quarter of an hour of action at the end of the game. Jay De Silva, Ben Cabango, Jordan James, Koumas, Dan James and Liam Cullen all came back into a stronger lookingteam. Of course, the last named attracted some comment and would have attracted a lot more if things had gone differently, but, to be fair to him, Cullen played an important part in the equaliser and grew into the game to the extent that when he went off in the seventy sixth minute, he’d more than justified his selection.

After getting off to an encouraging start, it must have been a kick in the guts to the Welsh how easily Norway opened them up to take the lead on ten minutes. I say easily, but, seeing the goal again, there was a precision to Martin Odegaard’s pass to Oscar Bobb which gave the clue as to why the Arsenal captain has been described as the Player of the Season in the Premier League so far and the Fulham forward gave the pass the finish it deserved as he calmly beat Danny Ward from ten yards.

It all looked pretty ominous, but instead, Wales responded positively as Thomas probably should have shot when well placed instead of trying to find Dan James.

Shortly after that the Hull winger saw his cross fly off a defender’s head and go about a yard wide as keeper Nyland scrambled across his line in a forlorn attempt to save. Nyland was then well placed to deal with Cullen’s angled shot, but with Odegaard not having the impact expected of him after the part he played in the goal and a subdued, and maybe distracted given recent events, Erling Haaland not contributing a great deal, Norway were finding it a struggle to keep their enthusiastic and energetic hosts at bay.

Cullen became by no means the first Welsh player to rob a Norwegian of possession well inside their own half on thirty eight minutes and the ball then found its way to Koumas who produced the right pass to set Thomas free. The winger drove towards the bye line before producing a low cross to Dan James who did ever so well to get in front of a defender to net from six yards.

Such had been the extent of the Welsh recovery after they fell behind that there was a feeling that they were unlucky to be just drawing at the interval, but the game took a decisive turn towards the home side just fifteen seconds into the second half.  Norwegian centreback Torbjorn Heggem initially allowed a long ball to bounce towards Nyland, but he’d misjudged the pace on the ball and Dan James was on it in a flash to suddenly put himself in on goal only for the defender to grab the winger some twenty yards or so out leaving referee Alejandro Hernandez with little option but to send Heggem off.

Neco Williams was the obvious candidate to take the free kick, but it was on the wrong side of penalty box for him really and so it came as a shock to see the full back’s low, driven shot go into the corner of the net. 

Something didn’t look quite right on first viewing – had there been a deflection off the wall maybe? Replays showed that there hadn’t been, William’s low effort went straight in and therefore my query would be about Nyland’s positioning as he maybe seemed too far over towards the centre of the goal meaning he was never going to reach the shot which was very well placed as it flew into the side of the net as opposed to what I, as an old fogey. would call the stancheon of the goal.

I daresay Nyland, who has been under pressure from media and supporters in Norway, will be criticised for letting what turned out to be the winner in, but Williams’ shot was placed to perfection and so I’d be a bit more sympathetic to the goalkeeper.

Wales worked their one man advantage well after that, even if they did have a few dodgy moments to endure – for example, when Haaland got in a powerful header which was calmly dealt with by Ward.

Really speaking though, it was Wales who came closer to scoring the game’s fourth goal with substitutes Josh Sheehan and Mark Harris seeing efforts well saved by Nyland and later when the keeper and Ben Davies were enough of a distraction to the goal machine to enable him to not get his head to a very dangerous cross.

Wales kept threatening, but when Ward carelessly presented the visitors with the ball about forty yards out, it ended up with Palace’s Jorgen Strand Larsen having a shot from twenty five yards which initially looked like it had bounced down and in off the crossbar only for replays to confirm it had hit the wooden pole taking the strain of the netting inside the goal . 

With Davies recovering from what was a shaky start by his standards and Cabango having what maybe his best game for his country, there wasn’t a great to overly concern the Welsh defence.

The very even match stats

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/live/c6wyzzzkr917t#MatchStats

Show the sending off was probably the game’s decisive moment, but I thought Wales were the better side while it was eleven v eleven and were, just about, deserving winners.

Wales had not been having a good international break until now, besides the two losses for the senior team, there was a 2-0 ldefeat  to the USA for the under 19s who were captained by City’s Noah Williams, while the under 21s were beaten 1-0 when visiting ]Belgium with, just as tonight, us conceding early on. However, when you consider Wales had lost 7-0 at home to the Belgians in the first meeting between the teams, that they had played the closing minutes of the first half and all of the second half with ten men following a daft red card for a couple of avoidable yellow card offenses for one of their central defenders and that we put the hosts under severe pressure late on with a series of corners, it was a frustrating outcome for a side that had done well for much of the time.

Posted in Down in the dugout, Out on the pitch, Wales | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

Limp Wales making no progress under Craig Bellamy.

Posted on September 28, 2026 by The other Bob Wilson

Although Wales couldn’t have any complaints about their defeat in Portugal on Thursday, there were crumbs of comfort to be taken. 

For example, we probably finished the stronger team and would have escaped with an unlikely point if Lewis Koumas and Dan James had not botched a simple chance between them when they had no goalkeeper and a single defender in front of them after Brennan Johnson’s lob had bounced back off the crossbar.

Tonight in Copenhagen though against what I’d call no more than a pretty good Danish side (their recent results tell you that), there were no consolations to be taken from a lucky 2-0 loss – I say lucky because it could have been a lot worse than a two goal defeat.

Wales looked a bad side tonight – they were flat in their attitude, slipshod in their passing, had a press that was played through far too easily, lacked composure and at times defended ridiculously deep.

Sorry to keep on bringing this up, but watching what appears to be a ream in decline tonight, I can’t help recalling that “this is as bad as well be” comment of Craig Bellamy’s following the very encouraging performance in drawing 0-0 with Turkey in his very first game in charge.

Well, after a run of mediocre performances, with one exception, against opposition a level below what we’ve faced this week, dating back a year, we definitely have been worse than we were against Turkey plenty of times.

Bearing that in mind, it wasn’t realistic to have high expectations going into this international break and, to an extent, that explains why the Portugal game was regarded in some quarters almost as a step in the right direction. Sadly, tonight marked a return to reality and at the moment, I’m struggling to think of a worse performance from a Bellamy team in a competitive game than this.

This international break is becoming something to be endured and the Bellamy train now limps on to Cardiff to face Norway and then the return game with the Danes with Portugal due to play here as well in November.

Although the days when we could contemplate us winning that trio of matches at Cardiff City Stadium are probably gone for ever now, I’d be pretty confident ordinarily about us being able to avoid defeat in two or maybe all three of them – after all, we beat and drew with Croatia and had a couple of draws with Belgium at home with post 2016 teams, so I’m not being pie in the sky there.

However, after tonight, I’d be pleasantly surprised if we avoid defeat in one of the three – again, there’ll be those who probably think I’ve taken leave of my senses when I say this, but I’d back the current City team to retain possession against that Danish side better than Wales did tonight.

I’m sure Craig Bellamy would disagree with that because, unless Joel Colwill has picked up an injury in training with the squad, he clearly doesn’t rate the Wales qualified players City have in that area of the park.

I say that, because Bellamy picked Joel in his original squad and then called up Charlie Savage of Reading when there were a variety of injury drop outs from it. The logical conclusion to be drawn by this course of events would be that the younger Colwill was higher up the Welsh midfield pecking order than Robbie Savage’s son is. 

However, this morning we learned that David Brooks, also presumably out with injury, and Joel were not in the 23 man match squad (Cian Ashford also missed out for the second time), but Charlie Savage was in there along with old faithfuls like Liam Cullen, Mark Harris and Wes Burns – not only that, Savage made it into the starting eleven! I should say here as well that this was giving Savage an almost impossible task as he has, apparently, played little more than an hour for League One side Reading so far this season.

During the summer there was some speculation about Charlie Savage joining City – he had a lucky escape there because if he had been Charlie Savage of Cardiff City now, it’s hard to see how he’d have won his first competitive cap today! 

As it is, I suppose Craig Bellamy must be grateful that Joel’s older brother wasn’t available today because then he would have had to explain to an incredulous Welsh media why it was that Charlie Savage, not Rubin Colwill, was accompanying Ethan Ampadu in the Welsh central midfield!

Wales also brought in Chris Mepham for Ben Cabango, Connor Roberts for Jay De Silva, Dan James for Jordan James {who surely would have been a better bet than Savage in central midfield?), Sorba Thomas for Brooks and Kieffer Moore for Lewis Koumas with Josh Sheehan being the one to make way for Savage.

While you can argue about the merits of individuals in terms of who was being replaced and was who was coming in, it seems to me that the cumulative effect of all of these changes was to leave us with a weaker team. 

Bellamy justified the changes in a pre game interview by saying, with such a short turn around between matches, players who started on Thursday would find it hard to have the required amount of intensity for an opponent like Denmark – I could see the sense in that, but it looked to me as if there were certain individuals, as well as the team as a whole, that did not provide enough of  that quality, certainly in the opening thirty minutes or so.

I’ll not take much time describing the game. When Wales did manage to mount a fairly promising attack down their right, they ran out of ideas and belief when they got into the attacking third, they were then easily dispossessed and played around by opponents who looked far more powerful and quicker than them. The counter attack was finished by a fierce volley from twelve yards by Gustav Isaksen which flew into the net past Danny Ward only for the goal to be ruled by VAR for a marginal offside call. Wales got lucky again a minute later when Mikel Damsgaard’s shot rebounded off an upright, but as the first half went into its final few minutes the visitors had their best spell of the game as Thomas shot just wide and Roberts saw his close range shot turned over by keeper Jorgensen after our best move of the game.

Neco Williams forced Jorgensen into a save at the start of the second period, but the full back, who will always be the first or second name on my team sheet was having one of his worst ever games for his country as he was been given a tough time by Isaksen and then gave away the free kicks which led to both goals.

In both cases, Williams’ fouls looked like needless ones to me. Both free kicks were taken by Damsgaard from very similar positions on the Welsh left and in both cases it seemed to me that our cause was not helped by how deep our defensive line was. 

To be fair, Damsgaard’s delivery for the first one in particular was excellent as the unlucky Ben Davies diverted the ball into his own goal with his arm.

For the second, the ball was headed towards goal only for Moore to head off the line and then things went into slow motion as Isaksen’s subsequent volley was hit nowhere near as sweetly as his earlier one as his shot got a deflection off Ampadu I think it was, and then slowly looped in off the under side of the crossbar. 

Williams had a goal disallowed after that and we came close as a Thomas cross flew about a foot wide with the keeper looking beaten and Roberts saw another shot saved by Jorgenson, but Wales ended a well beaten team despite the scoreline hinting at a closer game than it really was.

In the Cymru Premier, Cambrian recovered from last week’s 9-1 mauling with a 4-3 home win over Llandudno, although it became harder work than it should have been after Alex Bonthron’s hat trick helped put them 4-0 up after forty seven minutes.

In the Highadmit South Wales Alliance, both Treherbert Boys and Girls Club in the Premier League and Treorchy Boy’s and Girls Club in Division One East were beaten by the league leaders – the former going down 4-2 at Pontyclun FC, while the latter are still awaiting their first point after losing 5-2 at Red Lion BGC..

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