Listless and nervy Wales fluff their lines badly in Armenia as the Play Offs loom.

Posted on November 19, 2023 by The other Bob Wilson

A month ago, Wales came up with one of their greatest performances in this era which has to be seen as the best in the nation’s history to beat Croatia 2-1 at Cardiff City Stadium to put qualification in their group in their own hands. Yes, Armenia away and Turkey at home would be a tough climax to the group, but six points and we’d be through.

So, a 1-1 draw in Armenia in the first of the matches has to be seen as a disappointment, but, more than the result, it was the nature of the performance which was not only a surprise, but a real deflating experience as well.

Armenia showed in deservedly winning 4-2 in Cardiff in June that they were far from mugs, and they were definite contenders for a top two finish themselves until a run of disappointing results this autumn. However, they did know that a win today and an unlikely win in Croatia on Tuesday could see them scraping into the runners up spot, so it was hardly as if Wales were facing a side with nothing to play for.

Nevertheless, it was the flat, lethargic and one paced nature of the Welsh performance in the second half in particular that so disappointed. After making a bad start which saw them concede from a set piece in just five minutes, they got back into things with a bizarre own goal in first half injury time and, having improved slowly through the forty five minutes, you had to think that the momentum was with them at half time.

Instead, it was almost as if Wales thought they only needed a draw to qualify such was the lack of enterprise, verve and intensity shown for much of the second period. A penny seemed to drop with about fifteen minutes left and Wales did step up the attacking intent, but all it did in truth was show the paucity of ability, technique and invention in a team which had shown all three of those qualities, and plenty more, in their previous game.

In the end, Wales were distinctly lucky to get the draw as Armenia did everything but score in those closing minutes when their opponent’s limitations were plain to see – I’m afraid it looked very much like nerves got to too many of the Welsh side.

I think it’s inevitable that the pressure will intensify on Rob Page in the days leading up to the game with Turkey on Tuesday. My own view though is that the Croatia win will mean that the manager stays in place until the Play Offs in March at least.

Wales were already making unforced errors before they conceded from a corner on five minutes as Joe Rodon’s header lacked authority and power and merely made it to the edge of the penalty area where Lucas Zelarayan was able to avoid a couple of half hearted challenges and fire an impressive low shot past Danny Ward for his third goal against Wales in two games.

The goal appeared to throw the hosts into a cautious frame of mind as they conceded territory and possession to Wales who did little to make them think they would be handing back their lead any time soon.

David Brooks did fire not too far over the bar straight after the goal, but there was little to suggest an equaliser until Wales produced what was by far their best piece of football in the game as David Brooks’ superb pass opened up the defence for Neco Williams to feed Harry Wilson whose left footer from twenty yards was superbly tipped around the post by goalkeeper Ognjen Cancarevic. If Wilson’s shot had been a foot higher, I don’t think the keeper would have been able to save it, but as it turned out, it was the Fulham player’s only meaningful contribution after his heroics against Croatia and with Brooks withdrawn after just fifty minutes, the pair who were, arguably, our best players against the Croats had little influence today.

Wales did improve a little from the half an hour mark onwards during the first half, but, although the TV commentary team remained convinced we were bossing the game, I saw little evidence of that and it was a pleasant surprise to see home left wing back Nair Tiknizyan nod Connor Roberts’ long throw into his own net under pressure from Rodon.

Completely mistakenly as it turns out, I thought a fortunate equaliser would lead to a big improvement in our play in the second period, the momentum was now surely with us and, with the  Armenians needing to come out and chase a goal again, I thought the situation was made for the speed merchants, and the in form, Nathan Broadhead, to come off the bench and cash in on the open spaces left by the home side.

It just didn’t turn out like that though – I think I’m right in saying that Brennan Johnson is the second most expensive Welsh footballer ever after Gareth Bale, but, increasingly, I’m afraid, I’m coming around to the view that there must be two Brennan Johnson’s, one of whom only plays club football and another who only plays international football for Wales because it’s becoming more and more hard to believe it’s the same player.

Dan James came on for Wilson, but found himself playing wing back when Page brought Broadhead on for Connor Roberts as Wales became more and more anxious. The midfield of Ethan Ampadu and Jordan James, so impressive last time out, were pretty anonymous here, although the latter did get a decent shot away to test Cancarevic again – the keeper had a tendency to beat out shots/headers in front of him, as he did with later efforts by Kieffer Moore and James I think it was, but there was never anyone on hand to take advantage of this weakness.

Ampadu had a decent headed chance late on which he put straight at the keeper, but while we were failing to come up with anything that really endangered the home goal, Armenia were hitting the underside of the bar through Bichakchyan, Ward was making a superb late save to deny sub Edgar Sevikyan and there were numerous examples where just a touch more composure had to result in Armenian goals.

As I write this, Croatia are 2-0 ahead in Latvia at half time and it looks like Wales have lost their chance to finish second. Frustrating though today has been, it must be said that the level of our play throughout the campaign so far marks us down as the third, or maybe even fourth, best side in the section – maybe both team and supporters have become too used to having a Bale or Ramsey to come up with a moment of magic or Joe Allen to knit things together in the middle of the park because, more than anything else, today was a reminder of how much these three greats are missed.

Thursday saw a better result for Wales under 21s who overtook Iceland as qualification group leaders by beating them 1-0 at Rodney Parade. In truth, Wales were somewhat lucky to win against opponents who had an equaliser controversially ruled out for handball, but the way Wales defended with ten men after Swansea striker on loan at Port Vale, Josh Thomas, was rightly sent off was impressive.

Thomas’ dismissal with half an hour left saw Rubin Colwill left to plough a lone, very isolated, furrow up front for twenty minutes as he was reduced to doing only the sort of work off the ball that Erol Bulut wanted to see more of from him. Rubin had not been able to influence what had been a tight affair much when he was playing a number ten type role supporting Thomas, but he did show flashes of his ability in a game where it was the defensive players in red who tended to take the eye.

Two of them combined for the decisive goal on the half an hour mark when City’s Tom Davies, who has been getting some game time on loan at Kilmarnock this season, put over a lovely first time cross that just demanded to be headed in and Joe Low did the necessary with a firm nod of his head from about eight yards range.

Sadly,there was no appearance for Cian Ashford after his great injury time equaliser in the Czech Republic last month, but that was understandable given how the match panned out. Eli King did come on for the last quarter of an hour or so though and was able to play a full part in the Welsh defensive effort.

Wales now play number one seeds Denmark at the same venue on Tuesday I think it is – I’d say their two most recent performances make a win unlikely, but, if it could be done, they would be in a strong position to finish top of the group and qualify for the Finas as of right.

It was 1-0 as well for Wales’ under 17 team as they beat Belgium to take charge of a group which has lost one of the original four teams meant to contest i. Israel had to drop out for obvious reasons and so, with Belgium having already beaten them 4-0, we only need a point against Gibraltar to top the group – the ninety first minute goal we scored to beat the Belgians is shaping up to be the decisive one in the group.

Posted in Wales | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments

Such a let down as Cardiff City roll out the welcome mat for crisis club Norwich City.

Posted on November 12, 2023 by The other Bob Wilson

Cardiff City gave what I had rated as their worst performance of the season so far in drawing 1-1 at home to a struggling and out of form Watford side last month in the game before the last international break. At the time, some supporters tried to put a display that was a long way short of the standards the team have set for themselves over the last three months down to tiredness.

While it was true that the fixtures had come thick and fast during the period between the first and second international breaks, it had been the same for every Championship club and Watford had been through the same programme, yet looked much more lively and switched on than us – I wasn’t buying the tiredness excuse.

Our final match before the first international break was the 3-2 loss at Ipswich, but that result doesn’t look too bad now and, although the circumstances of the defeat were very disappointing, I thought luck was against us that day.

So, I wouldn’t want to make an issue out of how we fare in the final matches before a break and I’m certainly not going to start talking about tiredness when we have only played five matches in twenty two days of this portion of the season. However, I have to say that, in my opinion, we played worse than we did against Watford in losing 3-2 at home today to a Norwich team that had lost their last four matches and had someone who was uniformly considered to be a dead man walking in charge of them.

Erol Bulut sounded as frustrated and annoyed as I’ve heard him so far after the game. In some respects, I could sympathise with him, but I can’t agree with a lot of what he said.

For example, he thought we dominated a first half which ended with us 2-1 ahead, but all I saw was Callum Robinson have a ten minute period when he showed exactly what an influential performer he can be at this level, Josh Bowler generally having the beating of his full back and Karlan Grant becoming more of a factor as the half went on.

That apart, I thought we weren’t tired, but we were dozy and lethargic (Bulut used the word complacent, but that was more in the context of the second half and I wouldn’t disagree there). Yes, we had a lead after forty five minutes and we did get better as the half went on, but our two goals were only partly down to our good play, they also had quite a bit to do with Norwich showing why they had the worst goals against record in the division before today.

Much of our manager’s ire was directed at the substitutes he brought on and I’d agree that none of the four covered themselves in glory – Rubin Colwill wasn’t terrible, but he was far less involved than he has been lately and Ollie Tanner was nowhere near his best when it came to the defensive side of the game and had little attacking impact, Ryan Wintle scored an own goal and was unable to turn things around in the middle of the park where we were second best throughout with Manolis Sipios having maybe his worst game for us so far, while Kion Etete, who should have replaced the blunt instrument that was Yakou Meite long before the eightieth minute, looked the almost diffident tyro of a year ago on the limited occasions the ball came his way.

However, it was hardly as if we were playing well before the subs were introduced – Colwill, Wintle and Tanner were introduced in the seventy first minute and we’d been on the back foot all through the second half even before the changes.

With Grant’s influence waning (he missed our only real chance of the second half in a one on one with Norwich keeper George Long that I had little confidence in him winning), Robinson and Bowler seemed to be our best hopes of creating something out of nothing to give us the two goal lead that I don’t believe Norwich would have come back from, yet it seems they always have to come off when changes are made.

I have to raise the subject of managers singling out young players for criticism again here as well. Three of todays substitutes are twenty one years old and they’ve all been able to seriously influence at least one game off the bench this season in that they’ve scored goals in City wins, but I would argue that all three of them have been an improvement on the players they’ve replaced on many occasions as well – we were playing poorly before any of them got on the pitch today and we kept on playing poorly when they came on, so why single them out?

City were second best in the first half an hour of the game and, after Jack Alnwick had turned Gabriel Sara’s shot away, a corner was conceded from which the visitors took the lead as Sara’s near post dead ball delivery was flicked on by Kenny McLean and Christian Fassnacht was about two yards out when he scored as it appeared that Mark McGuinness had lost him.

City roused themselves out of their torpor and were denied a penalty (I’ll have more to say on this shortly), but were level not too long after when Norwich were completely caught out by a quick throw in which enabled Robinson to work the room to cross to the far post where Bowler had an easy finish from six yards.

Four minutes later, City were in front when, for some reason, Grant and Jamilu Collins found themselves in stacks of room down the left and the former fed the latter who provided a good cross to the far post which was nodded in from inside the six yard box by Robinson. I can remember thinking well at least we don’t concede goals like that at the time, but those words would come back to haunt me around an hour later!

Were City “complacent” in the second half? I’d say they were to the extent that they played as if they thought they’d already done enough to secure the win. To be fair to them, I suppose they had defended well enough in recent games to perhaps make them think that way, but, certainly in the previous three games where we’d not conceded a single goal, Joe Ralls and Siopis were playing well enough to provide protection to the back four, here they weren’t.

If McGuinness was partly to blame for Norwich’s first goal, he atoned with a goal saving block to deny Fassnacht a second, but with Alnwick frequently being called on to make saves, it was impossible to deny that this was looking like a game where City needed to do more than attempt to see things out to claim the points. First, we weren’t defending well enough to do that and, second, there were, surely, more goals to be had against what was a patched up visiting defence.

As the game entered its last ten minutes, you began to think that, despite everything, City might just come out with the win, but then they left Fassnacht free on the far post again at a corner to fire in a low cross that Wintle turned over the line in attempting to clear.

Two minutes later, a similar gap appeared on City’s right flank as the one which had been there for Norwich for Robinson’s goal. In saying that, at least Mahlon Romeo (deputising for the seemingly injured Perry Ng) was in position, but he got no help from Tanner or a covering midfielder as two opponents worked the space for Jonathan Rowe to come up with the winning goal, except Norwich’s top scorer saw his shot parried by Alnwick but only into the path of sub Adam Idah who couldn’t miss from six yards out.

Some felt our keeper should have made a better job of saving Rowe’s shot and there were also appeals for offside, but, frankly, City, and Norwich, had got what they deserved.

Finally on today’s game, I really wanted to say the woman referee did a fine job, but I’m afraid she didn’t. Rebecca Welch was I’m sure the first female to take charge of a City first team game and she got off to a bad start by yellow carding Ralls in what I think was the first foul committed in the match (a video of the incident showed that City’s captain didn’t touch the man he was supposed to have fouled as well).

I should add here that, having looked at the messageboards about the above, it would seem it was Grant who was booked for kicking the ball away, not Ralls for his foul. However, even if that first decision was the correct one under this season’s instructions to referees, there were other poor decisions with yellow cards being shown for innocuous fouls, while more serious ones were deemed to only merit a free kick. However, worst of all from a City perspective was when Bowler was brought down by Norwich left back Platcheta for what seemed a clear penalty only for the ref to wave play on. Rebecca Welch wasn’t the reason City lost this game though – for the second successive last game before an international break, too many of the side had an off day.

The first team’s loss came at a time when the age group and ladies City sides are doing well. Today the under 18s won their fifth straight game by 6-1 at Colchester – unfortunately, there are no details of goal scorers on the Academy Twitter site at present.

Finally, just a quick word regarding the blog. I’ve mentioned before that I’m no longer in the position where financial help from readers is needed to ensure its survival, but, if anyone is still minded to show their support for my scribbles, they are very welcome to do so – payments are accepted by bank transfer, PayPal, cheque and through Patreon, contact me at paul.evans8153@hotmail.com for further information.

A big thank you to all of you who support Mauve and Yellow Army with your donations and to everyone who has done so in the past when help was really needed.

Posted in Out on the pitch | Tagged , | 6 Comments