Flynn’s Wales job chances over?

Posted on October 13, 2010 by The other Bob Wilson

A night of pathetic defending by Wales was summed up by the sight of the two Collins’ tripping each other up in the build up to Switzerland’s final goal in their 4-1 win yesterday. City’s Darcy Blake made his full international debut filling in for the suspended Chris Gunter at right back and, after a solid and pretty assured first half showing, suffered an awkward few minutes before being taken off ten minutes into the second half after he almost cost his side a goal through his not dealing with a cross fired in from Wales’ left. It appeared as if that mistake was a final straw for Brian Flynn as Blake was replaced by Christian Ribiero, but, if the caretaker manager had applied the same standards to the other members of Wales’ back four, none of them would have made it to half time!

Although not quite as laughable as England’s defending against Germany’s opening goal in this summer’s World Cup game, Wales ran it close with their brain dead attempts to stop Switzerland’s first goal as, for some reason, Danny Collins decided he was playing centre half and jumped for the same ball with Ashley Williams. A simple flick on by the one Swiss player (Streller) left two of the back four out of the game and a gaping hole down Wales’ left for Barnetta to run onto. A minute later Collins was at it again, but this time with less disastrous results. I suppose he might have thought Williams needed help because he struggled in the air throughout and his failure to deal with another straightforward long ball almost cost Wales another first half goal – I think Ashley Williams has looked a Premiership class player for much of the last eighteen months or so, but he has been a long way off his best in the past few days.

Alongside Williams, James Collins gave a third consecutive Welsh performance in which his standards fell a long way short of those he sets in the Premiership week in, week out – if Switzerland’s second goal was a fluke as Streller capitalised on some more dodgy defending to score with a totally miss hit shot, it was ultimately down to Collins playing three Swiss players on by standing five yards behind his fellow defenders. Behind a back four that leaked like a sieve, Wayne Hennessey was having a fine game until, unusually for him, his distribution started to let him down and, as Wales struggled to plug the gaps in the second half, I was reminded of comments by two former International players.

The first came from Hennessey’s club manager Mick McCarthy who explained his decision to leave out the young Welsh keeper for the ageing and, far less talented in my book, Marcus Hahnemann a year ago by saying that the American would be more vocal and organise his defence more – although it’s galling to see a good young keeper like Hennessey on the sidelines, you have to admit that Wolves are conceding far less goals since McCarthy made that change. The other comment came from Kevin Ratcliffe on Friday night when he said that Chris Gunter’s sending off in particular and many of Wales’ problems in general were caused by them having no one to organise and talk the defenders through the game. Ratcliffe gets plenty of stick on Cardiff City messageboards for what he says when reporting on games for Radio Wales, but watching Wales’ pitiful defending last night, I’m not going to argue with him on this matter.

The shame of it was that Wales played pretty well going forward with Gareth Bale being outstanding. That really shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone who has watched him play in 2010, but what was were the performances of players such as Andrew Crofts and Simon Church. Having watched Crofts’ earlier Welsh performances and the way his career had gone off the rails as he had a spell playing Conference football at Wrexham, I wasn’t expecting much from him, but I had been forgetting that he is now a regular in a Norwich side challenging at the top of the Championship and he certainly looked a more complete and confident player last night. Andy King was another one in the midfield who did well and when you add the likes of Ramsey, Collison, Ledley, Allen and Stock to those on view last night, then Wales do seem to have the makings of a midfield that can be competitive at international level.

Before running out of steam (like many of his colleagues) in the second half, Simon Church also did himself no harm at all as his intelligence and mobility offered evidence as to why the likes of Liverpool were taking an interest in him last season – Church also has a very good understanding with Ramsey which should bode well for the future. With Wales looking so much more lively and inventive when attacking, it is not being biased to say that they could easily have scored three or four times. However, by the same token, although the margin of victory, courtesy of a penalty given after a dive by Barnetta and close range goal by Stocker, flattered the Swiss, the truth was that Wales were so disorganised at the back that the home side could have got into double figures if they had been more clinical in front of goal.

It’s hard to say where all of this leaves Brian Flynn now. Beforehand it was being said that the manager’s job was his to lose – well the bald facts say that we lost at home to a side with a very poor recent record and lost while conceding four to a team notorious for it’s lack of goals. That’s hardly a ringing endorsement of Flynn’s claims and while he can claim, with justification, that the sides he put out were seriously under strength, I’m not sure he has done enough – it’s a tough decision, but, if it was mine to make, I think I would look elsewhere.

The question is though, who is there to go for – none of the other Welsh born candidates stand out for me (I liked what Chris Coleman had to say about what happened with the Croatia friendly last season though) and the only “outsider” that seems to get mentioned is Terry Venables who would certainly come with a lot of baggage. What Venables would bring though is internationally recognised coaching talent and I am reminded of what he managed to do with a Middlesbrough team heading for relegation from the Premiership a few years back simply by getting them organised to the extent that they stopped conceding silly goals. It would be tougher doing that with the limited access he would get to an international side of course, but, in the absence of an outstanding candidate to perform such a role on the pitch, I would be inclined to go with someone who might be able to do that from the sidelines.

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There’s always World Cup 2014 I suppose.

Posted on October 9, 2010 by The other Bob Wilson

So, while Wales (population 3,000,000) almost certainly bids farewell to any hopes of proceeding past the group stages for Euro 2012 with the qualification process barely a month old, Montenegro (population 650,000) sit proudly on top of our group thanks to a trio of 1-0 wins. Meanwhile, much closer to home, Northern Ireland whose population is just over a half as big as ours, continue to take points off the giants of the European game at Windsor Park while also proving to be very competitive in their recent qualifying groups – all this with a team which includes Warren Feeney as a regular starter!

People looking for reasons for Wales’ very poor form (the close miss in 2003 apart, our record in qualification groups since the one for the 1994 World Cup is pathetic) often cite our relatively small population as a reason for our miserable results in competitive games. However, the examples of Montenegro and Northern Ireland (Armenia with a very slightly bigger population than us and Estonia with about 40% of our population, both had notable wins last night as well) show that, even though Welsh supporters should never expect qualification as of right, we are entitled to expect a lot better than we have been getting for the majority of the last sixteen years.

Of course, you hardly ever get to hear of an  international retirement from at least one of the Montenegro and Northern Irish squads whenever they gather for games, whereas that sort of thing is compulsory now in Wales apparently. I’m pretty sure that when Montenegro and Northern Ireland play, there is not a better team from those countries to be made up of players who have called time on their International careers that are sat on their backsides at home watching the game, but we aren’t far short of that situation now in Wales.

To be fair to those who bothered to turn out for their country last night, there was nothing to complain about as far as their attitude went. Brian Flynn exuded positive thoughts in the days before the game and that was mirrored in a more positive and enthusiastic approach from the team when compared to what we saw in the final throes of the Toshack era, but, sadly, although the commitment was there, the quality wasn’t.

Although I thought Bulgaria deserved their win, there wasn’t a great deal between the two sides, but, when it came to the technical aspects of the game, they were definitely superior. While you had the feeling that the ball was the Bulgarian’s friend, I lost count of the number of times that it flew a yard or more away from many of the Welsh players when they first received it. Sometimes the player concerned had the excuse that a pass which should have been played to him along the floor was actually a yard or more off the ground when he received it, but this just backs up the point I am making about the lack of technique amongst many of the Welsh players (six of last night’s outfield players are regular starters for Premiership sides)  when compared to their opponents.

I am not just singling out Danny Collins for criticism here because I didn’t think he was any better or worse than most of his team mates (Wayne Hennessey apart, I don’t think any Welsh player can be satisfied with his performance last night), but after about half an hour as he launched his umpteenth long ball towards Steve Morison, I said “you can tell the Stoke player here”. If you are playing a target man, there’s nothing wrong with hitting him with long balls, but if the target of those passes is also a lone striker, then they have to played when there are team mates close enough to him to get on the end of his knock downs – if those players aren’t there, then, apart from winning the occasional free kick, you are doing nothing more than giving possession back to opponents who, invariably in International football, are capable of keeping possession for long periods.

Danny Collins was the main culprit when it came to this, but he wasn’t the only one and the way that the ball was often played in the general direction of Morison was indicative of what I thought was a lack of precision in the Welsh play. This manifested itself in other ways such as the poor passing and first touch I mentioned earlier, but also in the quality of the finishing on the, very rare, occasions when the Welsh team got to see the whites of visiting keeper Mihaylov’s eyes. Although Chris Gunter (who, surely, can have few complaints with the decision to give him a red card in added time at the end of the game) has just the one goal in his senior career, he really should have done better with that early chance which came after what was probably Wales’ best move of the game. Similarly, Gareth Bale should have done better from a fine cross by Joe Ledley and Morison and sub Hal Robson-Kanu were close enough to goal to have scored with their headed chances at the end of either half.

Apart from when Morison saw his second half shot rather luckily turned around the post by Mihaylov, that was it really as far as the Welsh goalscoring threat went and with us doing very little as an attacking force in Montenegro either, the return of Aaron Ramsey cannot come soon enough. However, even if we do get Ramsey, Jack Collison and, maybe, Craig Bellamy back for the England match in March, we do look short of a cutting edge in front of goal – with the possible exception of Bellamy, I don’t see any strikers currently available to us who could have scored the goal Popov did.

There’s still a chance for Brian Flynn to get something tangible from the two matches in this international break – Switzerland’s 1-0 defeat in Montenegro offers further proof, if it were needed, that they are by no means the finished article in front of goal either. Perhaps keeping a clean sheet may not be beyond Wales in Basle, but, Swiss defensive solidity and our goalscoring problems has me thinking that the only result that will see Wales avoid defeat is 0-0 and that will not be good enough as far as our very faint hopes of qualifying go.

On the subject of Brian Flynn, I heard Kit Symonds say on the radio as I was driving home from the game that it would not be fair to assess his claims for the Welsh manager’s job on a permanent basis on just these two games. I take that point, but all of the signals coming out of the FAW over the last month or so have tended to confirm that, essentially, Brian Flynn had two matches to prove himself worthy of the job and I think to extend his caretaker management of the team beyond that now would look weak – Wales need a new manager in place when we face the Republic of Ireland in February. If that man is to be Brian Flynn then fair enough – there’s a part of me that says we need someone new and, perhaps more flexible tactically, who has experience of coaching and managing in other parts of the world with Flynn keeping his place in charge of the youngsters, but I wouldn’t be too upset with him getting the job – let the man know one way or another soon though.

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