Not much to say about the first game at Cardiff Stadium to be played in front of a crowd for just over fifteen months really as Wales and Albania played out a fairly predictable 0-0 draw this evening in front of an estimated four thousand.
I say fairly predictable, because this was the equivalent of an international last pre season friendly before the proper stuff starts with an emphasis on getting minutes in for players such as Aaron Ramsey, Joe Allen and Ben Davies, three of not too many in this squad who can say been there and done it when it comes to Euro finals.
There were also ninety minutes for Rhys Norrington Davies, Wayne Hennessy and Dylan Levitt all of whom are not likely to feature in Robert Page’s A team so to speak in the coming games. Maybe I’m misjudging things there when it comes to the second named, but it’s hard to see Danny Ward missing out after he played so well in midweek against France, while the last named, who I’ve been judging very lucky to have beaten off competition from Will Vaulks and Josh Sheehan for a midfield place, turned in what I’d regard as comfortably his best performance for his country so far.
Wales, with Ramsey playing as a false number nine as, once again, Page left Keiffer Moore out of his starting line up, were second best in the opening forty five minutes with only Rambo’s near post flick high and wide from a good David Brooks cross qualifying as a goal attempt. A feisty Albanian team meant that, just as against Mexico in March, this was no gentle stroll of a friendly – there were seven bookings in all and there could have been more.
Albania’s aggression also manifested itself in their pressing game which ensured that most of the play was in the Welsh half, not that this meant Wales’ goal was under siege- Albania only had two goal attempts in the ninety minutes, neither of which were on target, although Manaj wasted the best chance of the game when he fired wastefully over the top following a slip by Chris Mepham who I’m afraid is not the player he was a year or two ago.
A rusty looking Ethan Ampadu, missing from the squad in France, only lasted forty five minutes this time before making way for Moore.
The Welsh improvement in the second half cannot be put down solely to the City striker, but, once again, it did leave a feeling that, for all of Rob Page’s reluctance to include Moore in his starting eleven, the team looks better with him in it and his team mates are more effective in an attacking sense when he’s there.
That’s not to say Wales were unlucky not to win – chances were at a premium, but at least there was some fluency and urgency as Albania at least had to show the quality of defending that had given them clean sheets in their six previous away matches.
Ramsey, happier in a deeper role, and Levitt showed they had the passes to open up a massed defence, but, too often, the final ball or cross was found to be lacking – as was the case with most of the not too many attacking dead ball opportunities we had.
Nero Williams, cleared to play despite his ridiculous red card in France, forced visiting keeper Selmani into his most difficult save with a twenty five yarder and a minute later Moore glanced a header from a brilliant cross by sub Gareth Bale into the keeper’s hands from about fifteen yards out.
There were a fair few nearly moments for Wales as they searched for the winning goal they have usually found in the closing stages of matches lately, but not this time.
Back in 2016, my pre tournament hope was that we’d at least manage to score a goal. That proved to be a serious under estimation of our capabilities and so I’m keeping quiet about our prospects this time despite us being in what looks a more difficult group than five years ago, but what I would say is that, despite what strikes me as far more attacking talent than in 2016, we are overly reliant on our excellent goals against record to get us results – we find goalscoring a lot more difficult than we should do.
There was also a disappointing 0-0 draw at Llanelli on Friday as Wales began their latest Euro Under 21 qualifying campaign by dropping points against a Moldova side that you would have thought they would have had to beat if they were to make any sort of meaningful impact in the group.
I didn’t see the match, so I cannot be too critical, but, in a week of woeful refereeing decisions, it would appear that there was another one when the Maltese referee turned down strong Welsh claims for a penalty, judging that the already booked Sion Spence was guilty of diving – thereby leading to a situation whereby the ex City player was shown a red card as he was carried off on a stretcher!
For most of my life I’ve justified my claim that football is the best sport in the world by saying that, unlike, say, rugby union where the rules change every season, you could explain football to an alien who had landed on our planet for five minutes at most and they’d be able to fully understand the game – that’s no longer true I’m afraid.
More to the point, even an alien who initially got and enjoyed football would probably be put off it by what the game is becoming – I was last night as I gave up on Wales’ Euros warm up match in Nice against World Champions France early in the second half.
The last two football games I’ve settled down to watch have been completely ruined by the people deemed to be in charge of them and I can only hope that the return of spectators to games will bring about a reaction which will tell the game’s authorities that their fantastic product is being turned into a farce.
My first reaction to what happened in last night’s game was a kneejerk one as I blamed VAR for ruining the game, but it didn’t take me long to realise that it’s not responsible for the many miscarriages of justice and plainly bad decisions made since its introduction. VAR is merely a tool, a tool which does its job well – it’s the way it’s used and interpreted by human beings, that is the problem.
Remember the days when it was confirmed that VAR was only going to be used to correct “clear and obvious errors” by match officials? That’s was the talk first of all after it was agreed that it would be used on an experimental basis, but I can’t recall there ever being a time since it started being used where this was, in fact, the case. Right from the start, in the UK at least, football’s administrators and the match officials with access to the system were like kids with a new toy as they searched for reasons, often completely spurious ones, why they could stop the game and try to influence its outcome and, sadly, the situation is getting worse.
In saying that, Monday’s match between Newport County and Morecambe (the first of the two ruined games I referred to earlier) suffered because VAR was not in use. I’ll go into more details about specifics later on, but, essentially, a referee who was poor over the whole two hour course of proceedings made two crucial “clear and obvious” errors and there was no access to VAR to put them right.
Ordinarily, you could understand VAR not being in use for a match between a pair of League Two teams, but this was a Play Off Final at Wembley with promotion, and the financial rewards that go with it, at stake – there should have been VAR in use that day and then, perhaps, justice would have been done. I can only say “perhaps” there though, because the human being in charge would have to have interpreted what the system was showing him correctly and, based on the performance of the official over the piece, that could not be guaranteed.
So, we have one case of VAR not being used when it should have been and last night you have to wonder if it was really required for a warm up friendly where there was nothing riding on the result with every player on the pitch out to avoid an injury which would force them to miss the far more important games to come.
I’ll try not go into too much detail about what happened in the twenty fifth minute of what had been a pretty entertaining match with Wales competing well against what is probably the best international team in the world as they fashioned one or two decent openings in a positive and enterprising opening, because there are plenty of outlets where Neco Williams’ so called offence can be viewed.
However, I would say that in pre VAR days, there would be plenty of replays of the sort of incident we saw Williams involved in and the view of those commentating on the match would be that the player involved was so close to the ball when it was played that it was impossible for them to get their hands out of the way – overwhelmingly, the verdict of both pundits and officials would be no penalty.
In my opinion, they were completely correct in such a view. Surely, common sense tells you that there needs to be a degree of calculation on the part of the player involved for them to merit a penalty award and red card against them? The player who dives to punch away a goal bound effort which has beaten the keeper deserves the double punishment we saw last night – Neco Williams, and plenty of others who have suffered because of the ludicrous VAR interpretations we are now getting, did not.
If there was that degree of calculation I referred to earlier involved in Williams’ decision to place his arms where he did last night, then he is a phenomenon blessed with super powers that mean he really should be applying them in ways that could benefit humanity rather than just playing sport!
What Williams did was purely instinctive. I accept that, in VAR world, there is an argument for saying a penalty was justified, as many are doing, but this is a clear case of the law being an ass. Just because match officials have, perfectly understandably, only become aware of the “offence” after someone else has informed them that, after watching an incident for minutes in many cases, they feel a handball may have taken place, does not mean the ref has made a “clear and obvious error” – in fact, the only clear and obvious error being made is in the way the human involved interprets what VAR is showing them!
Dan James got it right after the game when he remarked that Portugese referee Luis Godinho needed to see the incident about twenty times before becoming convinced that it was a penalty. This has to indicate that there was a degree of doubt in his mind and if ever there was a case where the benefit of such doubt should have been applied, then surely it is in a nothing friendly game where, never mind Wales, France would have wanted to have warmed up for the major tournament to come by facing eleven opponents for the whole game, rather than the ten for three quarters of it that they ended up with.
If the decision to award a penalty was dubious (actually, I strongly believe it was plain wrong), then Godinho showing Williams a straight red card reduced things to a nonsensical level – the referee applied a robot like interpretation of the type you might expect to see if machines like the ones involved in the VAR process were ever given decision making responsibilities. It was one of the worst examples I’ve ever seen of a human making decisions based on what machines are telling them because there was no human element involved in it – where was the “feel” for the game the best officials have?
It matters little that Danny Ward, who made a strong case to be regarded as Wales’ first choice keeper in the Euros, saved the resultant penalty from Karim Benzema because the damage had already been done – the game was over as a watchable spectacle as far as I’m concerned as it became a mere training exercise from which I would have said France in particular gained very little.
The hosts scored a lucky first goal when Ward just about kept out a deflected shot, but only succeeded in diverting the ball into Kylian Mbappe’s path and the PSG man netted easily – Mbappe looked like he may have been offside in the build up to the goal, but it was not made clear whether there was a VAR check to decide whether this was the case.
I gave up on the game shortly after Antoine Griezmann’s fine goal to make it 2-0 early in the second half because me and the alien I had explained the rules to had decided we’d seen enough – too many “beautiful” games are being ruined these days because the people charged with operating a system which could benefit the sport do not know how to best use it and it has to be said that too many of those charged with taking control of a match under their own steam so to speak are, as on Monday, just not up to the task.
For the record, sub Ousmane Dembele completed the scoring on seventy nine minutes after Benzema had hit a post and Wales would have been grateful to have given Joe Allen, Ben Davies and the lesser spotted Aaron Ramsey some game time after recent injuries. Keiffer Moore came on and, in what I fear may be a foretaste of things to come from self important match officials, got himself a yellow card which I didn’t see, but I assume that it was for being tall. Jonny Williams, released by City after making little impact over the past six months, did not get on, but the real surprise selection in Robert Page’s twenty six man squad selection for the Euros, Rubin Colwill, did for the last ten minutes or so – congratulations to Rubin who must be pinching himself after all that has happened to him so far in 2021.
Moving on to Cardiff City, it’s taken a while, but the club issued their retained list on Tuesday – for anyone who is still not aware who’s staying and who’s going, you can find out here.
With it having been confirmed about a month ago that Junior Hoilett would be moving on at the end of his contract, it was the decisions to release Joe Bennett and Sol Bamba that, predictably, drew most comment.
Hoilett, Bamba and Bennett all arrived within a couple of months of each other in 2016 and, in terms of transfer fees at least, they didn’t cost us a penny. Bennett arrived first, signed during Paul Trollope’s short lived tenure as manager, but, as it turned out, an injury meant that his City debut was delayed until Neil Warnock’s first game in charge, so he made his first start alongside two of the four out of contract players Warnock had recruited (Marouane Chamakh and Kieran Richardson were the others who made nowhere near the impact Bamba and Hoilett did).
With a new manager and three debutantes, there was a feeling of a new era at City as an in form Bristol City were beaten 2-1 with Sol crowning a Man of the Match performance with the winning goal whacked in from about two yards out (that was typical Sol range!).
So, if the trio all beginning the City careers in the same game felt like a new era, the announcement of them all leaving at the same time comes across as the end of one I suppose.
The sentimentalist in me doesn’t like the notion of Joe being “cast adrift” when he is in the middle of his recovery from a serious injury and wishes we could have given Sol a deal for one more season, but I can also see the practicalities involved, especially at this very testing time for football club finances.
Apparently, Bennett had been offered, and turned down, a new contract before his freakish injury against Derby in February and the fact has to be faced that he is thirty one now. Clearly, age was an overriding factor with the Bamba decision as well – he’ll be thirty seven in January and he’s had to come through a very serious injury just over two years ago and then battle a life threatening illness in the last few months.
You get the feeling that, besides what he did on the pitch, Sol was a huge and positive influence off it during his time at Cardiff and I hope that efforts were made to try and get him to accept some sort of non playing role (ideally in coaching) with the club, but he made it clear that he wanted to carry on playing for a bit longer and I can see why the club felt that this wasn’t practical as far as they were concerned.
Bennett, Hoilett and Bamba were outstanding signings, making a total of four hundred and forty nine league appearances for us between them – I’d like to offer them my thanks and wish them good luck with whatever they do next.
Just some additional observations about the retained list, I thought Ciaron Brown (who played the whole game for Northern Ireland in their win over Malta on Monday) was out of contract this summer, but either I was wrong or he’s signed a new deal with the club and I missed the confirmation of this news. Also, Cian Ashford, who played his first match for the Under 23s at the age of sixteen just before the end of the season and is, apparently, very highly regarded at the club is not mentioned – I hope this is an error and not a sign that he has left us.
As for some of the younger players who are leaving, Dan Martin, ideally suited to a left wing back role, is a bit of a surprise and I’m sad to see a personal favourite of mine, James Waite, go. Ryan Reynolds looked a fine prospect when he first arrived, but had rotten luck with injuries, Ben Margetson looked to be progressing nicely earlier in the season, but his loan to Sutton didn’t really work out for him and Dan Griffiths, so impressive in the Academy in 18/19, was another for whom a loan, this time to Pen Y Bont in 19/20, didn’t seem to work.
Moving to off field matters, the club’s accounts up to 31 May 2020 have been filed at Companies House – Keith Morgan, an expert in football club finances who is also Chair of the City Supporters’ Trust, gives his analysis of them here.
Finally, it was an awful weekend for the other three Welsh clubs in the English pyramid system. Saturday lunchtime saw Wrexham become the the main casualties in what was a very congested race to get into the National League Play Offs as an away draw at an in form Dagenham and Redbridge team combined with wins for rivals elsewhere meant that they dropped out of the top seven and so have to face up to a fourteenth successive season in “the fifth division”.
A couple of hours later, Swansea never really got going in their Championship Play Off Final with Brentford who scored twice in the opening twenty minutes and then comfortably played out the rest of what became a pretty boring affair with few alarms.
Then on Monday, Newport lost their League Two Play Off Final against Bobby Madley, sorry, that should be Morecambe thanks to a controversial penalty decision in extra time. This was after the most stonewall of stonewall penalties following a two fisted punch by the Morecambe keeper to Scot Bennett’s face in the opening minutes was ignored by Mr Madley. Leaving aside the two penalty incidents, the referee was poor throughout and to my, admittedly biased, eyes consistently favoured Morecambe.
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