Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me moment costs Wales.

Posted on June 15, 2022 by The other Bob Wilson

So, the 21/22 season, which did not include a World Cup or Euros tagged on to the end of it yet still dragged on for what seemed like ages (the Cardiff City part of it did at least) comes to an end about ten days before what is currently a pretty small City squad reports back for pre season training for the 22/23 campaign.

The season ended with the two sides which contested the finale of the 20/21 campaign, England and Italy the finalists in last summer’s Euros, being thrashed in the Europa League – England were beaten 4-0 at home by a set of not so marvellous Hungarian Magyars and Italy 5-2 in Germany.

For Wales, their learning process in the A tier of the aforementioned Europa League continued with a third defeat in four by a single goal margin with the decisive scores coming five minutes from time in the first of them and in time added on at the end in the other two.

Indeed, in a freakish repeat of what happened six days ago, Wales equalised against the Netherlands after the 90th minute, yet still found a way to concede after that.

If the first winner at Cardiff last Wednesday was more down to Dutch good play than anything else, the same did not apply tonight as the defence was caught dozing by nothing more sophisticated than a long high ball out wide to our left and then flooding the Welsh box with runners for the knock down. Sadly, while this was going on, no one was tracking the four men in black (not sure why the Dutch seem so reluctant to play in orange these days) and so we were left with three defenders trying to cope with four attackers.

Being honest, the way we defended that situation was pretty typical of what I thought was an unusually careless Welsh showing and if we had been able to come away with the 2-2 draw we looked like getting, then it would have been an undeserved point.

It wouldn’t be fair to be too critical of the team for this loss though, coming as it does at the end of a block of five matches in a fortnight when all of the other sides in our group have only played four – four’s too many for June mind when there’s not a major tournament taking place and so the Welsh carelessness I mentioned earlier can be put down to tired bodies and minds I believe.

Dan James started his fifth match of this group of fixtures alongside Brennan Johnson up front with Sorba Thomas and Wes Burns at wing back and Harry Wilson in the number ten role. Ethan Ampadu and Matt Smith were sitting midfielders in front of captain Ben Davies, Joe Rodon and Chris Mepham – Wayne Hennessey was in goals.

The first quarter of the game was controlled by the Netherlands, who were their usual mixture of artistry and thuggery throughout. By the time twenty three minutes had passed the Rotterdam crowd had seen their team score twice with Wales doing nothing to justify the volume of support they were getting from the travelling Red Wall.

Wales were struggling at wing back in particular and Burns was punished when he carelessly lost possession on the halfway line in the seventeenth minute and a couple of quick passes set up Noa Lang on the edge of the penalty area who, despite having Rodon close by with Mepham just behind him managed to turn the pair of them left, then right before shooting past Hennessey.

Six minutes later, it was 2-0 and it felt like Wales could be facing a thrashing. This time, Wales had reason to curse a lucky rebound of a blocked shot which served as a perfect assist for Cody Gakpo to shoot impressively past Hennessey from just outside the penalty area.

Wales had done little to suggest they could come back from these setbacks, but, then, out of nowhere, they responded with an impressive goal which owed something to James for a good tackle on Teze, who struck me as something of a weak link in the Dutch side last Wednesday, and Wilson for his quick pass to Johnson. However, it was the quality of the Forest man’s finish which really took the eye as he coolly placed his shot from the same sort of distance the two earlier goals had come from beyond home keeper Cillessen and just inside the post.

The rest of the half seemed to be taken up by some of the home side’s players testing how far they could go before the Romanian ref waved a card at them – the answer was a long way.

Apart from Johnson’s goal, the only thing for Welsh fans had to get excited about was when a casual Cillessen almost allowed Johnson to charge down his clearance, but at 2-1 down after a half where they had gradually improved following a poor start, Wales were still in the game.

Burns had struggled after his impressive showings against Poland and Belgium and it was no surprise to see him replaced by Conor Roberts, with Thomas switching to the left where he coped better than he had done on the right in what was an uncomfortable first forty five minutes for him.

Although the Dutch were no longer enjoying the superiority that marked those opening stages of the game, Wales were struggling to get their dangerous looking forwards into the game enough because a combination of effective Dutch pressing and the limitations of a midfield lacking Joe Allen and Aaron Ramsey meant there was little quality possession in good areas for them to work with.

When Johnson in particular was given a chance, he worried the home defence, none more so than when a rare good passing movement from Wales enabled him to get past a couple of defenders and force Cillessen into a good save.

The introduction of Ramsey for Smith and Gareth Bale for James played a part in enabling Wales to gain some controlled possession and their best move of the game saw Thomas find Wilson, whose well struck shot was transformed into a simple save by a deflection off a defender.

In truth though, the home side were the more likely scorers as Hennessey was forced into some fine saves, but, while the margin was just one, there was the chance Wales could get something from the game and, with the clock going into the ninetieth minute they did so after another slick movement ended with Roberts being fouled as he challenged for a cross. After an interminable delay for a VAR check which came to nothing, Bale nervelessly placed the ball into the side netting giving Cillessen no chance of saving despite him going the right way.

Sadly, Wales had not learned their lesson from last week and it couldn’t have been more than fifteen seconds after the restart that the ball was in our net with sub Memphis Depay scoring from eight yards out.

In the other game in the group, Belgium won 1-0 in Poland, so there is still a chance Wales can avoid relegation with a win over the Poles in Cardiff, but it has to be seen as a long shot now.

Elsewhere a Wales Under 21 side featuring Eli King and James Connolly beat Gibraltar 2-0 at Llanelli, but it was a miserable finish to the under 18s tournament in Croatia as we were hammered 6-0 by Austria to leave us with three points from our three games.

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The strength in depth of Welsh men’s football in 2022 is as good as it’s ever been.

Posted on June 12, 2022 by The other Bob Wilson

It would have been a real injustice if Wales had come out of the three Nations League games they’ve played in the last ten days without a point. They were unlucky to lose in Poland in a match where what was a virtual reserve eleven were the better side for long periods of the game. Against the Netherlands, it was more the manner in which they lost than bad luck – for me, the better team  won, but it was cruel to lose out on a point after Wales had equalised in the ninety second minute.

Tonight, in a game which really emphasised how far Wales have come in terms of squad depth from even the glory days of 2016, they trailed by a single goal to Belgium, the team we seem destined to be playing in the group stages of any competition we enter, going into the last fifteen minutes or so and, having had to replace hamstring injury victim Joe Allen with Aaron Ramsey in the first half and introduced Rhys Norrington-Davies for Conor Roberts around the hour mark, they made a triple substitution as Gareth Bale, Ben Davies and Harry Wilson were all taken off.

With Wales already missing Keiffer Moore with a back injury, Bale and Wilson coming off looked a bit strange considering we were losing and that it was Brennan Johnson and Rubin Colwill, with their combined age of forty one, who replaced them along Wes Burns of League One side Ipswich.

Now Johnson is a very sought after performer who will be an important player for Nottingham Forest in the Premier League next season, assuming he doesn’t move to a bigger club in the transfer window, and City fans know that Colwill is a talented lad who could go far in the game, but were they really the sort of players, along with Burns who had only made his Welsh debut in the match in Poland, who could launch a revival against the team that has been ranked number one in the world for so much of the last few years (currently, they’re second behind Brazil)?

Well, yes they were actually, because Wales, who had played their part in making the match such an enjoyable watch, as encounters between these teams invariably are, raised their game to dominate the closing stages to the extent that it felt like a goal was coming by the time Colwill and Neco Williams combined well and the latter fed Ramsey in what looked to be a promising position.  if it wasn’t for the fact that the pass was a little bit too much in front of the man who was wearing the captain’s armband.

However, Ramsey then produced a lunge for the ball which immediately brought it under control and then a couple of brilliant touches which sent the ball into the unmarked Johnson’s path and he calmly dispatched it beyond goalkeeper Casteels and into the net.

Besides all of the brouhaha about Bale signing for City, there has been some speculation that Ramsey might as well if, as is being reported, Juventus were to rip up his contract. Now, I often say that Ramsey is my favourite current player, but, such has been his recent injury record, I’ve had reservations about such a move, but, leaving aside tonight’s nominee for best ever Wales assist, any Championship side would be mad to turn down the chance of having him represent them – Ramsey was also instrumental in the Welsh fight back and, having played about an hour all told, was going as strongly in his last minute as he was in his first.

Anyway, back to the goal. If you support a Football League club then you can celebrate as soon as the ball hits the net while also taking a quick glance to ensure that, first, the ref is not blowing his whistle for a foul and, second, the linesman doesn’t have his flag up. Unfortunately, it’s not that straightforward when there’s VAR involved as Wales fans learned twice tonight – first when Ethan Ampadu smashed a great shot into the top corner in the fourth minute, only for it to be ruled out by VAR because Joe Rodon had strayed about a foot offside and then with Johnson’s equaliser that quick look to the linesman I mentioned would have seen him with his flag up. This time though, the adjudication worked in Wales’ favour as the decision was overturned with replays showing that Johnson was millimetres onside – I can’t see how it constituted a “clear and obvious” error by the official though, not, for that matter, did Rodon’s offside, but it seems we’ve moved on from the initial interpretation of when VAR should be used..

Thankfully, there was no repeat of last Wednesday when the Dutch found a winner to follow up our very late equaliser, so, I think it is now just the one win for the Belgians in their past six competitive matches against us.

Belgium, missing Romelu Lukaku and Thibaut Courtois but otherwise at full strength it seemed to me, had a good middle third of the game when they were the better side and Wayne Hennessey was called on to repeat his heroics of last Sunday at times, but he was powerless to stop what I thought was a brilliant goal five minutes into the second half when a bout of one and two touch passing involving five or six players was ended by Youri Tielemans rolling a perfectly placed shot into the net from twenty yards.

It seemed to me that, apart from one moment, it was a goal where you couldn’t criticise anyone in the side that conceded because everything was done so well, but Williams did have an opportunity, lasting no more than a second or two to put the ball back up the pitch or out for a throw in and he was unable to do so..

Belgium must hate playing us because we tend to find a way to stop them winning and this draw, rather like the one against them in November which secured second place for us in our World Cup qualifying group, saw Wales taking the game to their illustrious opponents in a manner which I don’t think we would have seen from a Chris Coleman side – Robert Page deserves particular credit for turning us into a more attacking team in the last year or so.

Before the senior side started their game, Wales under 21’s were in action against the Netherlands at Park Y Scarlets, Llanelli where they were beaten by an eighty’s sixth minute goal to nil – Eli King was the only City player involved, playing the full ninety minutes of a match which saw Wales have two goal attempts to their visitors twenty one. It was a defeat as well for the under 18s who followed up their creditable win over hosts Croatia in a mini tournament also involving Austria and England by losing 2-0 to the latter on Friday – I have no details of the team, so cannot say if the four City players who featured against the Croats were involved at all.

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