Wales drew 0-0 with Turkey at Cardiff City Stadium a year ago in Craig Bellamy’s first game in charge. Despite the scoreline, it was a very promising entrance into the job for Bellamy- Wales were the better team against the side generally reckoned to be the best in the group and really should have won.
After the dog days of Robert Page’s last games in charge, this positive Welsh performance came as a pleasant surprise, but, in his post game comments, the new man in charge promised that his team would play better than that from now on.
It was a good line and when his team scored twice in the first three minutes in their next game In Montenegro you wondered if Bellamy could be right! In truth, Wales scraped over the line in that game by 2-1 and the truth is that Wales had almost certainly played worse in some games over the past twelve months. However, after this afternoon’s match in Kazakhstan even the most biased of Welsh fans will have to accept that this was a match where the standard of performance was much worse than Turkey at home.
Wales were careless, sluggish and had great trouble playing out from the back today for the last hour of the game and after hitting the woodwork twice (including with the last kick of the match) and having three or four more efforts go very close, the home team will be thinking this was a game they should have won.
However, not only did they not win, they didn’t draw either. Perhaps the biggest single factor in Wales’ improvement in the last dozen years or so which has seen them consistently in the world’s top thirty five is that they have discovered how to win away in qualification games against more than the absolute minnows of the world. Kazakhstan are currently some eighty odd places below Wales in the world rankings and so, going solely by those ratings, this was a game Wales should have been winning quite comfortably. However, based on this match and their 3-1 loss at Cardiff City Stadium last autumn, Kazakhstan are better than their ranking. If they were to be criticised, then it would be for their shooting not being good enough – Karl Darlow produced one superb save, but only had two other on target efforts to deal with and the fact that I can only recall one of them, a routine effort he’d make ninety nine times out of a hundred, tells you that Kazakhstan could definitely had done with a Kieffer Moore.
The striker became the first Wrexham player to win a full Welsh cap in seventeen years and he celebrated his fiftieth appearance for his adopted country by scoring the game’s only goal, his fifteenth for Wales, in the twenty fourth minute when he stabbed in from six yards. This happened after a save by home goalkeeper Temirlan Anarbekov to keep out a Liam Cullen header from a Harry Wilson free kick dropped into the striker’s path.
Wales had been in full control up to then, but in the ten minutes or so after scoring, control turned to sloppiness and they would have been grateful to reach half time with their lead intact after Kenzhebek had shot inches wide.
The same player tormented Wales again when he forced the save of the game from Darlow as he tipped his shot on to the crossbar and over. Kenzhebek then cut in from the left to shoot a foot wide as the Kazakhs effective pressing forced Wales into conceding possession too frequently.
Usually reliable performers such as Neco Williams and Ben Davies were struggling with the latter perhaps suffering because of a lack of game time at Spurs. Josh Sheehan is another who hasn’t been starting too often for Bolton and his midfield combination with Cullen looked a bit lightweight to me. In truth, Moore has played a lot better for Wales and, with Brennan Johnson giving one of his too frequent insipid Welsh performances, more than half of the team were struggling.
Craig Bellamy had emohasised beforehand that there could be no excuses in what was a must win match. For the manager, the artificial pitch and the 7,000 mile return journey involved should not be reasons for a substandard performance, but it was looking like they might well be anyway.
However, among the struggling Premier League and Championship stars, there was a League One teenage defender making his debut for his country who was giving a faultless and remarkably mature performance.
Dylan Lawlor owed his selection to Joe Rodon’s injury, but it was telling that he was selected over Swansea’s much more experienced Ben Cabango. Within seconds, Lawlor had made two sure footed interventions and it soon became clear that he had a prominent role to play in Wales’ attempts to play out from the back. Not all of his attempts to play out worked, but it was clear that when Wales did do it well, it was because Lawlor had played a leading role. Lawlor was on the same wavelength as Harry Wilson and David Brooks and that ability to combine effectively with clever game changers was easier for people like me to spot than it is in City matches.
I know I’m biased, but it got to the stage where, as the tension level ratcheted up in the second half, I found myself wanting Lawlor to be in possession because there was no one else in red who I trusted more in possession than him – he honestly was that good.
Of course, Lawlor was in the side to defend first and foremost and he did that well throughout with his best moment coming when Kazakhstan forwards were lined up to provide the finishing touch to a low cross fired across our six yard box only for him to get down and knock a very awkward ball clear.
Lawlor made his City debut in front of a full house at Villa Park and was pretty faultless that night and now he’s given what I’d say is his best ever performance as a senior footballer while making his first appearance for his country. In view of this, I reckon you can conclude two things, first, it takes a lot to intimidate Dylan Lawlor and second, increasingly, the “generational talent” hype looks like it could be justified.
As usually happens when he doesn’t start for Wales, Jordan James improved the midfield when he came on and the introduction of Brooks helped things as well to the extent that Wales found life less fraught (last second shots against the crossbar not withstanding!) in the last quarter and a lovely move involving Lawlor, another sub Mark Harris, and Wilson ended with the last named seeing his shot turned aside by Anarbekov.
This really was a must win game for Wales as they go top of the group with ten points from five games, but with North Macedonia and Belgium (who were 6-0 winners in Liechtenstein) having games in hand, we just have to keep on winning to stand a chance of winning the group.
There are a total of 23 City players on Wales duty at senior and age group levels through this international break and four of them, Alex Cross, Jacob Norris, Leo Papirnyk and Rob Tankiewicz were in the under 17 team that beat Estonia 4-1 yesterday.
