Although there’s nothing much to report on the club front at least, I thought it was time to start doing these reviews again as it will not be too long now before things like the release of fixtures for the 26/27 season and the start of pre season training are upon us and, as far as Wales at various levels are concerned, there have been a few internationals taking place.
There’s also the Donald Trump Rip Off World Cup to consider of course, but, given how I feel about that tournament and FIFA in particular currently, I can’t see me having too much to say on here about it in the coming weeks.
On the City front, there have been one or two under 21 pre season games announced, while the first team squad will be spending a week in mid July at a training camp taking place in what will be very familiar territory for BBM – Cork and its surrounding area. There’s a game on 14 July it seems against opponents that have not been revealed yet, but that will be three days after an attractive looking match at Cardiff City Stadium against Danish team FC Midtgylland which will kick off at 12.30. Besides that, it’s been confirmed that we’ll be playing an away game against Robbie Savage’s Forest Green Rovers on 25 July.
I’ve always said this blog is not really a place to come to if you want to read accurate, up to the minute news on the Cardiff City’s finances (unless I’m quoting someone like football finance expert Keith Morgan!), but I hope I don’t usually come across as vague as I’m going to do now when I write about talk concerning a pretty substantial debt to equity conversion by club owner Vincent Tan having taken place. It seems that shareholders of the club have been informed of this, but there’s been very little, if anything, in the media on it. There’s been little messageboard talk of this as well, but based on what I have seen on there, it appears that the newest version of what I still call Financial Fair Play rules (FFP), which will be in force in the new season, make such conversions more likely.
If anyone wants to read about the new rules, they can do so here. Suffice it to say from me for now that the consensus seems to be that the new rules gives City a bit more wriggle room when it comes to things like transfer budgets than the old ones did. Therefore, having already seemingly spent in the region of £1.5 million on making Nathan Trott a permanent signing, the sort of figures being bandied about for some of the players we’ve been linked with so far suggests we’ll be spending more than I for one was expecting.
That said, Friday saw stories emerging of interest from West Ham (let’s not forget they’re a Championship club, just like us, currently) in Dylan Lawlor and I must say that if we really are going to be looking at signing players with a value of around £4 million, like one of the ones we’re supposedly after, then you have to expect that there’ll be a need to “balance the books” somewhere along the line.
Elliot Watt who I mentioned in.my previous post on here is valued at somewhere between 2 and 3 million pounds by Motherwell, while centreback Ibrahim Buhari would, apparently, cost us £1.5 million. However, it’s between £2.5 and 4.2 million, reportedly, for Estonian midfielder Rocco Shein who it’s been reported we are chasing along with Millwall, who finished third in last season’s Championship.
Whether we do end up spending those sort of fees or not, the release of Ryan Wintle has surely made the central midfield area the place most in need of reinforcements. Even if Eli King can make the sort of return following his ACL injury on the first day of pre season training a year ago that makes him a realistic contender for a regular first team place, we’re still going to need at least one, and preferably two, new central midfielders.
On to Wales then and it’s time for a very embarrassing confession on my part. On Tuesday night, for the first time in the history of this blog, which was started in 2009, I missed a Cardiff City or Wales match because I forgot it was taking place!
Correcting myself, that’s not quite true. I didn’t forget about it completely because I can definitely remember thinking about it on Tuesday morning, but, as I settled down to watch the deciding game in the England v India Women’s T20 series at about 6.30, the fact that Wales were playing Ghana at Cardiff City Stadium an hour or so later completely escaped my mind!
Just as the cricket was finishing, I remembered that Wales were playing and so was able to watch the last fifteen minutes or so live. Wales were trailing 1-0, but were well on top for the small portion of the match I saw to the extent that the added time equsliser they managed from a neat Lewis Koumas near post header from a lovely Neco Williams cross looked deserved and there was even time for City’s Isaak Davies, on as a sub, to miss a couple of presentable chances after that.
I’ve since seen highlights of the game and Dan James especially was unlucky not to score as the Ghana keeper made fine saves to turn efforts from him on to the crossbar and then an upright in the first half. Ghana’s goal came following a fine save by Karl Darlow and then a shot against the same post James had hit.
It would seem that, before the home team’s late rally, the visitors had the best of the second half after Wales had been the better side before the break. Dylan Lawlor was the only City player in the starting line up, but a further injury of the type which has dogged him through the final months of the season saw him leave the pitch around the sixty five minute mark – Joel Colwill and Ronan Kpakio were unused subs, while Rubin Colwill was,once again, missing from the squad although it was reported that this was down to a “minor injury”
There were a couple of Welsh games on Friday as well. Once again, cricket took over from football in my priorities as I spent most of the time preferring to switch between the England v New Zealand test match and Glamorgan’s T20 game at Worcestershire, rather than the World Cup qualifier between Montenegro and Wales’ women’s teams.
One reason for me spending so little time watching the football was that, under the intensely complicated qualification rules for the Finals, Wales had already clinched their path through to the next phase because the top three in the qualifying group make it through to the next stage of the Play Off procedure. Clearly, the higher you can finish, the more advantageous seeding you receive in the draw for the next stage and it was in Wales’ hands to come first if they could follow up a win against a Montenegro team ranked about fifty places below them that we’d beaten 6-1 in the reverse fixture, with a draw or better against Czechia in Wales in a few days time.
However, after going ahead in the first half through a dubious looking penalty award from which Hannah Kane scored, Wales then gave away an incredibly careless equaliser around ten minutes from. the end which means that it’s now the Czechs who only have to avoid defeat to top the group.
Wales is hosting the Under 19s Euros this summer and so have already qualified. They’ve picked a provisional squad for warm up games, which, surely, won’t be too different from the one for the tournament proper, which includes three City players – Jac Thomas, Noah Williams and Rob Tankiewicz. It was only the latter that began the match with Qatar hough, although it looks like eleven changes were made at half time and Williams played the second half – presumably, Thomas had some sort of injury as he didn’t feature at all. Anyway, Wales won by 2-0 with Luis Gardener of Everton adding to an own goal to complete the win.
Finally, apart from when Wales have been involved in the final stages of major tournaments, seasons covered by this blog have always ended with a game played by the national team some time in early June and it seems to me that they tended to see us not playing well and losing. Well, although tonight’s game in Romania proved to be a more interesting and entertaining watch than your typical meaningless friendly, Wales brought the curtain. down on MAYA’s 25/26 campaign with a 2-1 loss and a performance I would describe as patchy.
If there has been qualifying points at stake in the game, it would have been a source of great frustration to me that there were two spells of around fifteen to twenty minutes in the match where Wales were, clearly, the better team. Yet, by the end, they could have few complaints about the outcome because, for about sixty per cent of the time, the home side were as dominant as we were in our spells of superiority.
Wales, with Coventry teenager Kai Andrews making a first start in midfield, were the better team early on, but never really looked to cash in on this superiority. In my view, this was because of the four attacking players named in the starting eleven, Kieffer Moore, Brennan Johnson, Nathan Broadhead and Dan James, it was only the last named who didn’t give an impression that they thought ending their season. with a pointless match in Bucharest was a bit of a waste of time.
Once the hosts started to play around the twenty minute mark, they went on to have the better of the first half and had a goal wrongly disallowed for offside. After the break, Romania continued to look the more likely scorers and went ahead on fifty two minutes through Florinel Comin with a neat finish to end a fluent attack.
The introduction of Connor Roberts, David Brooks and Lewis Koumas for Rhys Norrington-Davies, Broadhead and Moore brought about an immediate Welsh improvement as they levelled within two minutes as Neco Williams found James in space and his cross to the far post was put away in assured manner by a Brooks volley.
At that stage, Wales looked likely winners, but, although the introduction of Sorba Thomas with twenty minutes continued the trend of subs improving our attacking, Romania were now getting chances of their own and they scored the decisive goal on eighty minutes.
Although I’ve enjoyed City’s season more than any other in recent years, a consistent negative in 25/26 for both the club and country I support has been how poor they’ve been at defending dead ball situations and corners in particular. This time, Wales were undone by a short corner routine and Adrian Rus outjumped Josh Sheehan, who really shouldn’t be marking a centreback at a corner, to head in on the near post from eight yards.
To underline this weakness, Wales could have conceded from the next corner they had to defend as both sides chased the game’s fourth goal in an. exciting finish. Koumas, looking confident after playing a part in Hull City’s unlikely promotion to the Premier League, had two chances to equalise, but was denied by good defending and then seeing his well struck shot hit the home keeper in the face at close quarters, but, for their part, Romania hit the post and forced the busy Danny Ward into more saves as opportunities rapidly arrived at both ends of the pitch.
Ronan Kpakio came on for the last ten minutes or so, but saw little of the ball in the sort of attacking areas where he may have impacted the game and so Wales were left to reflect on what is a winless 2026 so far.
Therefore, if I were giving an end of season report on Wales’ 25/26 campaign, I couldn’t grade it higher than a C- compared to a B for 24/25. Disappointingly, Craig Bellamy’s second season in the job saw both his own and his team’s levels fall. Five wins, four draws and one defeat in 24/25 against three wins, three draws and four losses this time around (and I’m being generous there in treating the Bosnia game as a draw) clearly shows that results were worse, but, more worryingly, so were performances.
Two of the wins were unconvincing single goal affairs in Kazakhstan and Liechtenstein which means that so much of the “heavy lifting” for the season just ended is being done by the 7-1 win over North Macedonia. To be fair, although the score may have flattered us somewhat, it was still an outstanding win against opponents whose record, both in the short and long term, going into the game suggested it would be a tight and tense affair, perhaps decided by a single goal.
So, I’m not going to do what was a superb Welsh performance back in November down, but I think it’s reasonable to ask the question, North Macedonia aside, when did Wales play well in 25/26?
As mentioned earlier, I’ve seen little of the game against Ghana, so I can’t comment on that. Therefore, this leaves me with the 2-4 loss to Belgium where I thought we gave a decent account of ourselves, but fell short of our standards against them in most of the frequent encounters we ‘ve had with them in the last decade or so. I also thought we were quite unlucky to come out on the wrong end of things against Bosnia, but, rather like Mark Hughes in that Russia Play Off game back in 2003, it’s going to be seen as a night where questions had to be asked about the team’s selection and tactics.
This may read as being harsh on Craig Bellamy and, to try and balance things a little, I still think he’s the man for the job, but maybe 25/26 has shown that, although it may not have looked like it twelve months ago, he and his team are having to learn on the job so to speak.
