Cardiff City mauve and yellow army.

On the day before Cardiff City players returned to training in preparation for the 23/24 campaign, the 22/23 season ended (truth is, only the senior season has ended, Wales under 21s have a tea time game in Denmark this afternoon) with another dreadful performance and result for Wales who followed up their embarrassment by Armenia on Friday with a 2-0 loss in Turkey.

In recent seasons, I’ve found the Welsh team to be the light to help get me through the gloom of the dull, attritional and usually losing fare served up by Cardiff City, but that is coming to an end and I don’t mean because City are definitely going to improve – I fear that the national team are in for a spell in the doldrums.

The writing has been on the wall for over a year now. Robert Page can complain about his critics pointing to a record which now stands at one win in twelve without making any allowance for the quality of the opposition we’ve faced in many of those matches as much as he likes, the truth is getting into the top group in the Nations League was supposed to be part of an educational process for a young squad which would serve them well in later qualifying competitions for the two major tournaments..

Yet, the reality is that, in what I wouldn’t say is a particularly testing qualifying group for a tournament where we’ve made it through to the latter stages in the last two competitions, we’re turning in our worst set of performances in at least a decade.

Page is presiding over a collapse in standards and discipline (Andy Morrell’s red card is the fifth I can think of in the last two years, a shocking record that. should lead to a quiet word in the manager’s ear from the people who gave him what is looking like an increasingly ridiculous four year contract just nine months ago)..

So, it looks like we’re stuck with Page for the foreseeable future. The only saving grace I can see from this latest loss, which could have been a lot heavier than 2-0 despite the opposition not being up to much, was that the team never stopped trying, so it doesn’t look like Page has “lost the dressing room” yet.

However, the man who had only ever managed in the third and fourth tiers of the English pyramid before becoming an international boss is sending his team out to play like a plucky loser division side facing a higher placed team in a cup match – we can’t match our opponents for quality, so we get stuck in and run about a lot. There is something which should be taken into account here though, the last two teams that have beaten us are well below us in the world rankings (although Turkey will be overtaking us quite soon I’d guess).

I’m not going to waste much time on the game, but it was a very strange affair which had me thinking that with a quarter of the match left, we could escape with a point despite spending virtually the whole evening defending and only having ten men for fifty minutes out of the ninety.

VAR came to Wales’ rescue inside the first ten minutes as Turkey became the latest opponent to be allowed plenty of room down the Welsh flanks as they made one of what were many incisions down our left and the resultant low cross was clumsily turned into his own net by Chris Mepham only for the goal to be ruled out by a very close offside call earlier in the move.

To be fair, there were few alarms for Wales besides that in the first half as, despite doing next to nothing going forward themselves, a limited home side insisted on shooting, not very accurately, from distance.

Wales were looking quite comfortable in fact until a very sloppy bit of work by Connor Roberts put Joe Morrell in an awkward position. When a free kick was half cleared to him some thirty five yards from the Turkish goal, Roberts had a simple pass on to Morrell who was outside him on the right. Instead, Roberts took too long and a block from a Turkish player sent the ball high towards Morrell who was now facing the prospect of a Turkish counter attack if the home player going for the ball got to it before him.

Maybe this was why Morrell decided to fly into a tackle with his foot almost a yard off the ground and the inevitable result as the Turk went down under the challenge was the straight red card that, in the modern game especially, the challenge warranted.

With Brennan Johnson struggling with an injury in the latter stages of the first half, the Forest man made way for centreback Ben Cabango at half time as Page settled on playing for a 0-0. Yet such were the home side’s limitations, Dan James was able to win a free kick some thirty yards from the home goal despite being outnumbered four to one when the ball was played up to him.

Harry Wilson drew a diving save out of the keeper from the free kick and that was about the only time in the game a Welsh goal looked possible.

Worse than that though, it signalled something of a Welsh fade out as they ran out of steam in the final quarter of the game. Despite their dominance of possession and territory, Turkey were doing little with it until another example of the daft interpretation of what constitutes a handball these days saw Aaron Ramsey penalised when the ball hit his arm from a distance of no more than a yard. Calhanoglu’s spot kick was struck powerfully, but Danny Ward threw himself to his right to make a fine save.

A few minutes later, substitute Nayir looked to have put the hosts in front, but another strict handball interpretation, this time by VAR, ruled the goal out.

It was at this stage that I began to think Wales would make it through to a draw, but within another few minutes yet another cross from the Welsh left saw Nayir get above a static Mepham to head towards goal from six yards. Ward got his hand to the ball, but could not prevent itt crossing the line – maybe the keeper should have done better, but he had a right to expect a defence containing three tall centrebacks to have been able to deal with high crosses into the box all night long.

The best bit of quality on a night almost devoid of demonstrations of the beautiful game came when Guler placed a great shot from the corner of the penalty area beyond the helpless Ward to confirm a victory which the Turks clearly deserved despite them being the sort of side a Welsh team in their pomp would have expected to deal with fairly comfortably.

With Armenia following up their victory on Friday by scraping a late 2-1 home win over Latvia, Robert Page thinks we now have to win all four remaining games to qualify for Euro 24 through the group phase. We’ve had our improbable result against Croatia already when we, somehow, managed to draw over there in March – we may be able to grind out another draw in the return game, but a win is surely out of the question.

Of the other three games, I’d say they’re all winnable, but, equally, they all could be lost if we keep on playing like we have done in this international break. Given the direction we’ve been headed in the last fifteen months under a manager who seems to have no clue how to address the slide, a fourth, or even fifth, placed finish is looking a lot more likely than a second placed one at the moment.

So ends a season which has been among the most miserable I can remember. What should have been a glorious celebration of a first World Cup appearance in sixty four years turned into a nightmarish experience from which barely anyone in the Welsh camp emerged with credit (in fact, did anyone?).

On the club front, City had their worst season in twenty plus years, only avoided relegation because of another side’s points deduction and continued to treat playing in front od their own fans as if they were the visiting team at the Etihad Stadium.

It was only at youth and women’s levels that club and country prospered with a Wales Under 17s squad heavily reliant on eight City players ending the first appearance at an age group major trophy finals by a Welsh team since 1981 with honour intact despite finishing at the foot of their group. Unlike the seniors who were lucky to emerge with a single point, Wales were unfortunate in losing to hosts Hungary and conclusively beat group winners Poland in their final game.

City’s women’s team went unbeaten in winning their league and were able to successfully defend the cup competition they won in 21/22 to complete a double – it would have been a treble were it bot for a defeat by Cardiff Met in the equivalent of the League Cup Final.

Internationally, Wales’ women’s side are getting closer to qualification for a major tournament. Although they were deservedly beaten by Switzerland in in the complicated Play Off procedure for the World Cup tournament which begins next month, the winning goal did not arrive until added time in extra time.