No late winner to paper over Welsh attacking limitations this time – a really bad night.

I said in my piece on the Belarus game that I would make a big supposition and assume Wales would be able to win their three remaining matches against the group’s weakest teams Belarus and Estonia, but I’m afraid that, with a team as short of goal power as this one is (it’s now sixteen goals scored in our last nineteen matches), I really should know better than to say such things.

Apart from the 3-1 win over a Finnish side that had a player sent off after ten minutes, Wales’ successful Nations League campaign was founded on a series of dull games where we hardly looked like scoring until we got the late goal which won us the three points and the home win over the Czech Republic in this World Cup qualifying group offered more of the same.

No side can live off such thin pickings indefinitely and tonight, against a team ranked 110th in the world, Wales’ attacking shortcomings were exposed as Estonia took their first point of their campaign with a 0-0 draw in which they came closest to scoring in the first half (Mattias Kait hitting the cross bar from twenty yards as Wales suffered another first half fade out) and could have pinched a win with a couple of late opportunities.

An Estonia win would have been an injustice mind, because, once Wales finally got an effort on target after a turgid hour, there were plenty more that followed and luck didn’t go their way when, after Estonia’s teenage keeper Karl Hein had made one of a number of good saves by blocking a Gareth Bale shot, the captain’s follow up header rebounded off an upright and out.

Estonia defended doggedly and their goalkeeper had a good night, but this is a team that had conceded a total of fifteen goals in losing matches against the Czech Republic, Belarus and Belgium – they aren’t a good side and they’ll probably lose their return matches with those three teams, but tonight they’ll have no reason not to believe that they can do the same again to Wales when they travel to Tallin next month.

Three or four years ago, I used to look at all the young, technically gifted, attacking players we had coming through and think that we’ll be scoring for fun around the time of the 2022 World Cup, but, for different reasons (David Brooks, like Aaron Ramsey, plays so few games for us due to injury that you tend to forget about him these days) most of them have flattered to deceive.

Dan James is the type of winger that tends to stay out wide and so he needs to be fed the ball as opposed to him going looking for it. Consequently, he can be quiet in games, but he showed again in the closing stages tonight that he definitely has something at this level, so I’d say he’s the only one of that younger attacking set that is fulfilling his early promise.

Of the others, Harry Wilson has shown on plenty of occasions that he is a very gifted technical player, but he is so one footed, as he showed within the first minute tonight as Chris Gunter’s best contribution of the match saw him burst down the right and cross low to Wilson who was clear of the last defender, but, as Danny Gabbidon observed in commentary, it was a ball which should have been taken with the right foot, instead Wilson opted to use his left and his shot drifted harmlessly wide – score that and the night would probably have turned into the comfortable victory it should have been.

Shortly after Bale’s header had forced Arsenal’s Hein into the first of his saves with the first on target effort by either side in the game, Tyler Roberts was played through by Joe Morrell I think it was, but, not for a second, did I have any faith in him scoring and Hein was able to make a fairly simple save. Roberts is another of those neat attacking players we specialise in, but he’s still seeking a role in the team – Wales have tended to use him up front, but no goals in seventeen caps I think it is now rather tells a story.

The fact of the matter is that, record scorer Bale apart, Wales’ most effective attacking player recently is someone who has spent the majority of his career playing in the lower divisions or in non league football, someone whose selection for his first cap was greeted by the words “Keiffer who?” – Wales are hardly free scoring when he plays, but Mr Moore’s importance to them was proved again in the last week despite him not having kicked a ball for the team.

There’s not much more I can say about the game really, except that Rob Page stuck with Allen/Morrell midfield combination and, although they both did some very good things in isolated incidents, they didn’t impress me as a partnership and haven’t done so for quite some time now.

With Matt Smith and Dylan Levitt having done so well in Finland a week ago, I’m somewhat baffled as to why, firstly, we’ve seen nothing of those two since then and, secondly, Allen and Morrell played the full ninety minutes of both of our competitive matches despite them struggling physically as early as the first half against Belarus.

It seems Jonny Williams influences international matches more than he does club games these days and I can understand to a degree why he was brought on after Wilson departed after thirty six minutes following a collision with Hein where he appeared to suffer a head injury. It seems to me however, that he is someone who is good for a twenty to thirty minute appearance – increasingly, he had nothing to offer as his sixty five minutes on the pitch ticked by.

It needs to be emphasized of course that Wales have been in a state of flux or maybe even inertia since Ryan Giggs stepped aside in November of last year and Rob Page’s record in that time of six wins, five draws and four defeats with thirteen goals scored and fifteen conceded is not a bad one. However, I don’t believe it’s quite enough to keep him in the job if and when Giggs leaves formally because, while that poor goals for figure received a boost on Sunday thanks to Bale’s hat trick which contained two penalties, it’s definitely on a downward curve. Also, after a long period where we were very tight defensively, we’ve started to concede two’s three’s and fours, something which was almost unheard of in the latter years of the 2010s.

It’s a testimony to how good a player Joe Allen was for us that the decline in his performance levels, entirely due to a combination of injury and the ageing process, is seeing us look much more porous as our midfield struggles, and often fails, to keep up with the pace and movement of our opponents. There was plenty of evidence of this on Sunday and it was there again, albeit to a lesser extent, tonight as out lowly opponents had the better of things in the closing stages of the first half as Wales, again, faded badly after a good start. The similarities didn’t end there either, because the first fifteen minutes of the second period saw us struggling badly to raise a slow and unimaginative tempo.

The introduction of Mark Harris again coincided with an improvement in the Welsh performance, but Page came across as limited tactically and in his use of substitutions against opponents that tired an awful lot in the last ten minutes or so. It’s this sort of thing which just leaves those question marks when it comes to Page’s suitability for doing the job he’s doing now as a caretaker on a full time basis.

For me, the onus is on Ryan Giggs to force the issue now by resigning as manager because this limbo is not doing anyone any good. While I appreciate that he is innocent in the eyes of the law until proven guilty and so him hanging on is justified to some degree, the honourable thing would be to step aside with the realisation that he is young enough to return to the job in the future if he is exonerated with his reputation intact. For now though, we’re in a position where our qualifying hopes are being damaged and there can be no medium to long term planning – also, it’s not really fair to Robert Page to leave things as they are.  

A far better result came from the under 21s who, after only drawing against Moldova at home in their first game in their qualifying group for the age group version of the Euros, went to Bulgaria and won 4-0 – Blackburn’s Jack Vale scored a hat trick and Crewe’s Billy Sass Davies got the other one. Sam Bowen played the full ninety minutes, while there was a first cap for Isaak Davies who came on for the last few minutes – Keenan Patten and Kieron Evans were unused subs.

Taylor Jones was in the Wales Under 19 team which ended their programme in the four team tournament they have been competing in over the past week with a 2-2 draw with Turkey thanks to a penalty equaliser scored in added time, but it was the only point they ended up with after earlier losses to Croatia and Austria.

It’s the time of year again when I ask readers of Mauve and Yellow Army to make a contribution towards its running costs. Before I go into detail about this, I should, once again, offer my sincere thanks to all of you who have helped ensure the future of the blog over the past three years through a mixture of monthly payments via Patreon, monthly Standing Orders into my bank account and once a year payments via bank transfer, PayPal, cheque and cash.

The first time I made this request for assistance, it was prompted by a need for funds to pay for three yearly web hosting costs which, frankly, I was in no position to meet following my move of house a few months earlier. However, I’m pleased to say that, this time around, the web hosting bill was settled back in June with none of the problems there were back in 2018.

Therefore, any monies received this year will go towards other running costs and, although it’s too early yet to make any formal commitments despite so many of the pandemic restrictions in Wales being lifted recently, I am minded to do another review of a season from the past book to follow on from “Real Madrid and all that” which looked back on the 1970/71 campaign. At the moment 1975/76, the first promotion season I experienced, looks to be favourite for the book treatment, which would mean a lot more trips back and forth to Cardiff than my finances have become used to over the past year and a half – hopefully, the majority of them will not have to be made via Radyr Cheyne!

As always, the blog will still be free to read for anyone who chooses not to make a donation towards its running costs and, apart from the one in the top right hand corner which is to do with Google Ads, you will never have to bother about installing an ad blocker to read this site because there will never be any.

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