Welsh senior international football made a very welcome return to Wrexham tonight as what I can only describe as a shadow Wales eleven faced Trinidad and Tobago in a friendly warm up game for Sunday’s Euro 2020 qualifying group opener against Slovakia at Cardiff City Stadium.
Racecourse regulars will have got used to watching their side maintain their low scoring promotion challenge with a series of 1-0 home wins and they saw another one tonight. However, it is extremely doubtful that they have seen one in which the decisive goal came as late as the third of four added minutes at the end of the match.
By the time the goal went in, Liverpool’s Ben Woodburn, who is coming to the end of a difficult season which has seen his loan spell to Sheffield United ended early because of the lack of game time he was getting with the Yorkshire club, had made himself, perhaps, the most influential player on view after an underwhelming start by the teenager.
The fact that Woodburn decided to chest home his goal from about two yards out offered some sort of commentary on a game which, in so many ways, turned out to be a typical modern day Wales friendly. I watch games like this with little expectation of seeing much that is easy on the eye or encouraging – invariably, they are lacking in action, diminished by the endless stream of substitutions from half time onwards and forgotten by those who view them within a few days.
To be fair, I thought there were some good individual performances from the Welsh team. I’ve already mentioned Woodburn and I liked George Thomas’ intelligence and movement up front, while Ryan Hedges was a lively presence on the left wing and Will Vaulks, who has sometimes been reported as a City target, was able to mark an effective debut in midfield with an assist as his fine cross from the right presented Woodburn with a chance he couldn’t miss.
Vaulks also has a very powerful long throw which may come in handy in different Welsh teams to this one, but here it was wasted when there was so little aerial presence in the side. I mentioned Vaulks’ cross for the goal -this was one of a series of of very inviting balls put into the Trinidad penalty area from out wide, but so many of them were a waste of time I’m afraid because Wales just did not have the height up front to cash in on them.
Match summariser David Edwards was right when he said Sam Vokes or Gareth Bale might have had a field day with all of the crosses that were being swung in, but as the former is not in the party because of injury and the latter was watching from the stands alongside Wayne Hennessey, Ben Davies and Aaron Ramsey, I’m afraid that too much of Wales’ seemingly good looking attacking play was misguided.
I mentioned that it somehow seemed appropriate that Woodburn decided to chest in Vaulks’ cross, rather than head it – it was if the scorer had more faith in his technique with his chest than he had with his head. On second thoughts, that’s probably not true, but I’ll stick with it for now to make the point that this was a Welsh side not set up to beat Trinidad by an aerial assault and so it was disappointing to see so much of what we did being conducted in a manner which suggested that it was.
Despite having a 21-2 advantage in goal attempts according to the BBC’s stats, it says it all really about Wales’ lack of attacking threat that the closest we came to a goal before the very late winner was when the dependable Chris Gunter cleared an effort by Aubrey David for the visitors off the line early in the second half.
Still, although the outcome in these type of games is usually neither here nor there, I believe that after defeats by Albania and Denmark in his last couple of matches and a record of only three victories from his first nine games in charge, Ryan Giggs needed a win from his team tonight as he goes into what has to be the most important encounter so far of his reign as Wales manager.
I’ll finish by mentioning that Wales Under 19s were also in action tonight as they took on hosts the Netherlands in their opening game of the unfortunately named in these days of populist politics, Elite Group for qualification to the European Under 19 Championships to be held in the summer.
Only the winner of a group which includes Spain and Slovenia will qualify for the Finals and so what looked a pretty daunting task beforehand became even more of one following a 2-1 loss for Wales.
With Ryan Reynolds, Sion Spence and Isaak Davies all injured or in the process of recovering from injury, City are represented in the squad by George Ratcliffe, Keenan Patten, Sam Bowen and Dan Griffiths. Ratcliffe was between the sticks for Wales tonight and Griffiths was the other City starter before being replaced midway through the second half by Southampton’s Christian Norton and it was he who equalised with just ten minutes left.
However, as one Wales side benefited from a very late goal, another one found themselves beaten by one when the hosts snatched the three points with a winner in the second minute of added time.
The fact that the Slovenians were able to draw 1-1 with Spain in the other match only emphasises the size of the task facing Wales now as they prepare to face the Spaniards on Saturday and Slovenians next Tuesday, but they were able to qualify for this mini tournament after winning their final two matches in a group which saw them lose their opening game, so all hope is not lost yet.
Thanks, Paul.
Watched the first 20 minutes and thought that my prediction of 0-0 was very much on the cards. Didn’t appear to be any cohesion in the Wales side at all, so I gave up.
I was thinking the same as you Colin, but stuck with it to the end – I suppose it was worth it in the end, but, increasingly, I find these friendlies to be very heavy going.