Well, they’ve done it again! Wales maintained their lead at the top of their Nations League group today with their fourth 1-0 win of the competition to back up the goalless draw they played out with the Republic of Ireland in Dublin last month to stay ahead of Finland who won 2-1 in Sofia against bottom team Bulgaria.
This was a better game than the first meeting against the Irish, but, again, our opponents could feel they deserved better from it. Having had the majority of the few scoring chances there were in Dublin, Ireland were not exactly dominant in Cardiff, but the first three quarters of tonight’s match followed a similar pattern with Wales, just like they have done all autumn, struggling to create anything.
Wales and the Republic have been familiar foes in recent years and apart from the glorious showing in Cardiff a couple of years ago when an Ethan Ampadu inspired Wales were well worth both their victory and their 4-1 winning margin, encounters between the teams have been tight, tense and physical affairs with the fairly common red card shown – tonight offered more of the same right down to there being a red card to go along with seven yellow ones.
Before going on to describe the game, a few words about the side selected by stand in manager Rob Page. There was no Cardiff City representation in the starting eleven – whether Harry Wilson would have been involved from the start is doubtful anyway, but a one game suspension for two yellow cards in earlier games meant that Page couldn’t pick him.
However, leaving out Keiffer Moore was a contentious decision given he’d played well against the USA on Thursday and the part played by the target man in the improvement that enabled Wales to qualify for the Euros after a faltering start.
Before Moore came along, Wales had what looked like a mouth watering array of attacking talent with Gareth Bale, David Brooks, Dan James, Wilson, Tom Lawrence and Aaron Ramsey. Sadly, the last named has barely featured for his country since his couple of goals against Hungary secured that qualification mentioned earlier as injuries have taken their toll on him, but Page decided to return to thinking from around eighteen months ago by putting his faith in this group of technically accomplished performers as Bale played on the right, James on the left and Brooks as a false number nine/number ten.
Quite how this attacking line up equated to the 3-4-3 formation shown on Sky’s coverage, I’m not quite sure. For much of the time, the Irish centrebacks had no one to mark when, as I understand it, the object of a false number nine is to drag them about into areas they don’t want to go into – that was just not happening during the first half especially. Sky had got Wales’ three at the back right though with Joe Rodon, Chris Mepham and Ben Davies together against a team that had not scored in their last five games.
It all looked a bit too defensive a selection for me. It would be wrong to say that the selection of combinations of those six players I’d mentioned earlier had not worked in Ryan Giggs’ early games in charge – six goals against China and those four against the Republic showed that.
However, we were heading out of the Euros after those defeats in Croatia and Hungary in June 2019 and it needed the introduction of an attacking focal point in Moore to turn things around.
Mind you, three goals in six matches this autumn had shown that things were not working too well in an attacking sense with Moore leading the line either, so the decision to leave him out may have been understandable to a degree. Without him though, all Wales could muster in an attacking sense in the first forty five minutes was a shot from a free kick some thirty five yards out by Bale which had Irish keeper Darren Randolph concerned as it flew narrowly over the bar.
Wales seemed happy enough to pass backwards and sideways with no great urgency and, having mentioned Ampadu’s tremendous contribution to the big win over the Irish in 2018 earlier, I’m afraid he and Joe Morrell were distinctly second best to their counterparts in central midfield tonight – I’m not joking when I say that the best central midfield performance I’ve seen from a Wales player in the last two matches has come from Newport County’s Josh Sheehan.
Wales had no one who could match the incisive passing of Robbie Brady, who floated over a free kick in the opening two minutes for the man who represented the main Irish attacking threat, Shane Duffy, to nod wide when he probably should have scored. Brady then shot not too far over from the edge of the penalty area, before finding James McClean with a beautifully disguised ball whose shot drew a smart save from Danny Ward.
Welsh frustration was epitomised by Morrell’s kick out at Jayson Molomby in an incident which saw both players booked – the midfielder was lucky it was not a red card which would have meant he would have had to have joined Ben Davies, booked after a sloppy bit of ball control early in the second half which epitomized Wales’ performance at that time, who’ll miss the Finland match through suspension.
The Spurs defender stepping out from the back to try his luck from distance in the opening stages of the second period suggested a more aggressive Welsh attitude and Neco Williams, the one Welsh player to add a sense of urgency throughout the ninety minutes, seemed torn between shooting and trying to find Bale on the far post after he’d worked a good position for himself and the Welsh captain had a scuffed shot from around the penalty spot comfortably saved by a diving Randolph, but it was soon back to the stolid stuff of the first half as Ireland probed while looking precisely like a side with such a poor scoring record – when they did threaten on rare occasions, Wales, once again, had reason to be grateful to the likes of Rodon and Mepham for some very good defending.
Wales needed to change things and when Moore was introduced, it was for Rhys Norrington-Davies, who had just impressively beat Matt Doherty and knocked in a dangerous near post cross, but, generally speaking, had been one of the chief proponents of the backwards and sideways passing which Wales have been too keen on by half this autumn.
With Davies moving over to left back in what became a 4-2-3-1 formation, Wales looked more assured and business like as soon as the change was made.
That said, Moore’s first contribution was to earn a booking for a pretty obvious dive, but, shortly afterwards, he played a part in what was, by a distance, Wales best attack of the game so far – an attack which decided the match.
Ignoring the fact that he was now supposed to be primarily a defender, Williams started things with the sort of incisive run he’d been coming up with all night and then found James, who had looked the same clearly lacking in confidence player he had been in last month’s internationals up to then, but, this time, he drove to the byeline before delivering a fine near post cross which drew both Irish centrebacks towards Moore – Duffy managed to get a touch on the cross and it looked like the danger had gone, but Bale, arriving on the far post, did well to guide a header back which took Randolph out of the game and allowed Brooks to nod in from inside the six yard box.
By scoring in the sixty sixth minute, as opposed to the last ten minutes, Wales were able to show their talent for the counter attack to good effect in the time that remained and, although Irish sub James Collins forced three saves from Ward, they were all in the competent rather than brilliant category.
Up the other end, Bale shot narrowly wide, Randolph made the save of the game to deny Brooks after he had run from halfway and the keeper also did well to prevent Moore from scoring his first home goal, although, truth be told, both of the Welsh players he foiled should have scored.
With Wales’ brilliant defensive record and Ireland’s woeful scoring record, it looked fairly comfortable for the home team in the last quarter of the game until Williams blocked a header with his hand while defending a corner – the, correct in my view, opinion in the commentary box was that it would have been a penalty if VAR had been in use.
The last meaningful action of the game saw the already booked Jeff Hendrick chop down sub Tyler Roberts as last man and it was no surprise to see the ref show a straight red, rather than a second yellow, to the unlucky midfielder who had been left in a terrible position by a suicidal pass from a team mate.
So, provided they avoid defeat on Wednesday, Wales will win the group. As mentioned earlier, a few years ago, you’d have thought that any success we achieved would come off the back of the mixture of young and proven attacking talent we had, but this will be a triumph based very much on defence if we manage to keep the Finns out again in three days time.
Can I also remind you about my recently published book Real Madrid and all that which is available in e book and paperback formats and can only be purchased from Amazon.
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