Typical! A few hours after I wrote a piece on here bemoaning the lack of news and discussion points on the Cardiff City side, the FAW go ahead and create the biggest Welsh football story of the summer so far by announcing that team manager/head coach Robert Page has been sacked!
Here’s a few thoughts on yesterday’s news and once I’ve finished with them, I may be clearer in my mind as to whether I agree with the decision or not.
The first thing I’d say is that the news of the dismissal came as a surprise. In particular, I’m talking about its timing – I would have thought that most would have believed that when Page was not sacked straight after the failure to qualify for the Euros it meant that he would be given until at least the first two matches of the Nations League campaign in September to save his job.
Certainly, yesterday’s decision looks a little odd when looked at in the context of Robert Page being allowed to take charge of the team for two end of season matches that were probably viewed as a nuisance more than anything else based on the fact that they were not going to be the hoped for warm up matches for another major tournament we’d qualified for.
Although there were quite a few senior players missing with injuries from the selected squad for the games with Gibraltar and Slovakia, there were others not selected who were fit and available. You would have thought they could have been selected and you would have assumed that Page would have wanted to pick the strongest available squad if there was any hint that his job was on the line in what were, essentially, meaningless end of season friendlies – the sort of games which normally tend to get forgotten about within weeks, or even days, of them being played.
Page’s experimental squad selection clearly did not set alarm bells ringing regarding his future in the job and so, it seems to me, that it was what happened in the 0-0 draw with Gibraltar and the 4-0 defeat by Slovakia that convinced the FAW that Robert Page was not the man to take Wales forward.
That seems like somewhat confused thinking to me on behalf of the administrators, just like it was when they awarded a four year contract in September 2022 three months after Ukraine had been beaten to secure that elusive World Cup qualification.
When you consider that Robert Page had seen us through to qualification for the 2020/21 Euros, provided a promotion to the top group of the Nations League and added a World Cup qualification to his CV, I don’t think there were too many who begrudged him his new contract at the time, it was more the length of it which attracted negative comment.
The truth was that the Nations League campaign in a group consisting of us, Belgium, the Netherlands and Poland was, not too surprisingly a bit of a disaster – Wales were competitive in most of the games, but ended up with just one point out of a possible eighteen.
Ironically, the match which should have set alarm bells ringing the most is the one which probably provoked the greatest celebration that Welsh football has known outside of Euros or World Cup Finals competitions.
I was taken in like everyone else by what the win over Ukraine meant, but, in hindsight, there were warning signs aplenty that afternoon (they were present, albeit to a lesser degree, in the Semi Final against Austria as well).
We were over reliant on the fading powers of Gareth Bale, Aaron Ramsey and Joe Allen and I would say that Ukraine would have won that game eight times out of ten on the balance of play over the ninety minutes. The biggest reason that didn’t happen was that another veteran, Wayne Hennessey, chose that afternoon to have the best game of his international career.
Just two months after Page signed his contract, Wales’ performances in Qatar were so poor that I almost, but not quite, wished we’d not qualified despite that sixty four year wait. It was a tournament too far for Bale and Allen, while Ramsey has done little yet to suggest that the same didn’t apply to him. While none of that would have come as a complete shock, it was more alarming still that the rest of the squad, despite generally having a level of experience comparable to the successful 2016 Euros one, struggled so badly – no one who could be called a regular pick enhanced their reputation in Qatar.
There had been rumblings regarding Rob Page’s tactics ever since he took over, on a temporary basis originally, from Ryan Giggs, but I chose to put this down to a tendency to look at his modest managerial CV in club football among many while ignoring what his Welsh team were doing during the first half of his tenure.
However, despite the decline of three very important members of Wales’ best ever team, I think there was still a feeling that there was enough talent in the squad to have fared a lot better than they did when they finally got to play in a World Cup Finals tournament.
Where I had been largely tolerant of Page when it came to his tactical approach and team selections, it seemed to me that, on the biggest stage, his limitations were laid bare as he came second to each of the three managers he faced when it came to tactics and the approach of his team – Wales weren’t great in drawing with the USA courtesy of a Bale penalty, but they were a lot worse against Iran, who won at a canter, and they surrendered meekly against England.
Ever since then, Page has been under pressure and, following the embarrassing 4-2 home loss to Armenia, it felt like he was fighting for his job when Croatia came to Cardiff in the autumn of last year, but, on a night when much was made of the team showing their support for their under pressure coach, Wales recorded their best win in recent years as Harry Wilson scored twice.
Unfortunately, the players have not been able to hit the same sort of heights since then. They played well in beating a limited Finland 4-1 a few days before the elimination by the worst Polish team of recent years. Additionally, if there was knowledge within the squad that Page’s job was on line in the two games earlier this month, the response was nothing like the one we saw against Croatia.- they were ponderous, one paced and tired looking against Gibraltar and I said in my piece on here for the 4-0 loss to Slovakia that it was the sort of performance by Wales that gets managers the sack in club football.
Of course, I’ve not referred yet to the matter which may have been paramount in the decision to part with Rob Page – the crowd turned against him. Those Welsh fans who travelled to Gibraltar were critical of the manager, but not the players, after the draw against the side ranked 203 in the world and it was more of the same after the Slovakia hiding.
In the huge majority of cases, managers don’t tend to win back the respect and faith of supporters once it’s been lost and, if that was the thing which, seemingly, changed the opinion the FAW had after Poland, then I’d say they probably made a sensible decision in bringing the Page era to a close. Where they erred for me is in creating a situation where there was still more than two years of Page’s contract to run when he was dismissed – far better to have given him a two year deal back in 2022 and to quietly announce it was not going to be renewed come September.
Robert Page leaves with a record which compares favourably with any other Welsh manager if your criteria is major tournaments reached. What he did when he got to them though was less impressive and this all contributed to an overall record which wasn’t terrible and might have been considered perfectly acceptable in various periods of Welsh football history, but not in an era considered to be our best ever.
Only a third of Rob Page’s games in charge of Wales were lost, but a win rate of just twenty eight per cent shows that too many matches were drawn. That said, despite that calamitous World Cup and the sobering 4-0 defeat to Denmark in the 2020/21 Euros, I wasn’t as unhappy with his management as many were and I feel there should be more recognition of the fact he qualified for two major Finals for a country not used to such riches, I also credit him for the seamless transition from Ryan Giggs’ management – Giggs’ absence was not felt at all in. those early days of Page’s tenure.
In the end though, it felt like keeping him in the job was just delaying the inevitable and I mentioned after his last game in charge of his country that, for the first time, he appeared almost resigned to his fate – I mentioned earlier that the timing of his sacking came as a surprise, but, after further consideration as I’ve typed this, maybe it shouldn’t have done,
As for a replacement, Vincent Kompany’s departure from Burnley to Bayern Munich offers the possibility that Craig Bellamy might be available – if he is, then I’d definitely make the man who should have got the job when Ryan Giggs was appointed six and a half years ago my first choice, ideally with an experienced side kick such as Osian Roberts.
