After giving maybe their worst performance under Craig Bellamy on Sunday when they were beaten 2-0 in Denmark, Wales produced one of their best under this manager in beating eighteenth in the world ranked Norway 2-1 at Cardiff City Stadium tonight to record a first Group A win in the Nations League.
They were helped along the way by a Norwegian red card within seconds of the restart after half time, but that came about through another example of the visiting defence being driven to distraction by an aggressive Welsh forward press which suggested they could get something out of a game in which they conceded after ten minutes.
Given the low key nature of the performances in Lisbon and Copenhagen, going 1-0 down so early with the manager under the most pressure he has seen since his appointment, things could have got pretty fraught. However, with Sorba Thomas giving a second successive Welsh Man of the match display, Dan James running him close on the opposite flank and the tireless Lewis Koumas again impressing, Wales gave the Norwegian keeper and defence, which seems to me to be the weakest part of an impressive, emerging team, plenty to think about.
City players Joel Colwill and Cian Ashford were on the bench this time with the former getting a quarter of an hour of action at the end of the game. Jay De Silva, Ben Cabango, Jordan James, Koumas, Dan James and Liam Cullen all came back into a stronger lookingteam. Of course, the last named attracted some comment and would have attracted a lot more if things had gone differently, but, to be fair to him, Cullen played an important part in the equaliser and grew into the game to the extent that when he went off in the seventy sixth minute, he’d more than justified his selection.
After getting off to an encouraging start, it must have been a kick in the guts to the Welsh how easily Norway opened them up to take the lead on ten minutes. I say easily, but, seeing the goal again, there was a precision to Martin Odegaard’s pass to Oscar Bobb which gave the clue as to why the Arsenal captain has been described as the Player of the Season in the Premier League so far and the Fulham forward gave the pass the finish it deserved as he calmly beat Danny Ward from ten yards.
It all looked pretty ominous, but instead, Wales responded positively as Thomas probably should have shot when well placed instead of trying to find Dan James.
Shortly after that the Hull winger saw his cross fly off a defender’s head and go about a yard wide as keeper Nyland scrambled across his line in a forlorn attempt to save. Nyland was then well placed to deal with Cullen’s angled shot, but with Odegaard not having the impact expected of him after the part he played in the goal and a subdued, and maybe distracted given recent events, Erling Haaland not contributing a great deal, Norway were finding it a struggle to keep their enthusiastic and energetic hosts at bay.
Cullen became by no means the first Welsh player to rob a Norwegian of possession well inside their own half on thirty eight minutes and the ball then found its way to Koumas who produced the right pass to set Thomas free. The winger drove towards the bye line before producing a low cross to Dan James who did ever so well to get in front of a defender to net from six yards.
Such had been the extent of the Welsh recovery after they fell behind that there was a feeling that they were unlucky to be just drawing at the interval, but the game took a decisive turn towards the home side just fifteen seconds into the second half. Norwegian centreback Torbjorn Heggem initially allowed a long ball to bounce towards Nyland, but he’d misjudged the pace on the ball and Dan James was on it in a flash to suddenly put himself in on goal only for the defender to grab the winger some twenty yards or so out leaving referee Alejandro Hernandez with little option but to send Heggem off.
Neco Williams was the obvious candidate to take the free kick, but it was on the wrong side of penalty box for him really and so it came as a shock to see the full back’s low, driven shot go into the corner of the net.
Something didn’t look quite right on first viewing – had there been a deflection off the wall maybe? Replays showed that there hadn’t been, William’s low effort went straight in and therefore my query would be about Nyland’s positioning as he maybe seemed too far over towards the centre of the goal meaning he was never going to reach the shot which was very well placed as it flew into the side of the net as opposed to what I, as an old fogey. would call the stancheon of the goal.
I daresay Nyland, who has been under pressure from media and supporters in Norway, will be criticised for letting what turned out to be the winner in, but Williams’ shot was placed to perfection and so I’d be a bit more sympathetic to the goalkeeper.
Wales worked their one man advantage well after that, even if they did have a few dodgy moments to endure – for example, when Haaland got in a powerful header which was calmly dealt with by Ward.
Really speaking though, it was Wales who came closer to scoring the game’s fourth goal with substitutes Josh Sheehan and Mark Harris seeing efforts well saved by Nyland and later when the keeper and Ben Davies were enough of a distraction to the goal machine to enable him to not get his head to a very dangerous cross.
Wales kept threatening, but when Ward carelessly presented the visitors with the ball about forty yards out, it ended up with Palace’s Jorgen Strand Larsen having a shot from twenty five yards which initially looked like it had bounced down and in off the crossbar only for replays to confirm it had hit the wooden pole taking the strain of the netting inside the goal .
With Davies recovering from what was a shaky start by his standards and Cabango having what maybe his best game for his country, there wasn’t a great to overly concern the Welsh defence.
The very even match stats
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/live/c6wyzzzkr917t#MatchStats
Show the sending off was probably the game’s decisive moment, but I thought Wales were the better side while it was eleven v eleven and were, just about, deserving winners.
Wales had not been having a good international break until now, besides the two losses for the senior team, there was a 2-0 ldefeat to the USA for the under 19s who were captained by City’s Noah Williams, while the under 21s were beaten 1-0 when visiting ]Belgium with, just as tonight, us conceding early on. However, when you consider Wales had lost 7-0 at home to the Belgians in the first meeting between the teams, that they had played the closing minutes of the first half and all of the second half with ten men following a daft red card for a couple of avoidable yellow card offenses for one of their central defenders and that we put the hosts under severe pressure late on with a series of corners, it was a frustrating outcome for a side that had done well for much of the time.
Pleased to see that my rant after the last game did the trick!
What a relief! And on we can surely go, and for most of the game we gave a good display, despite an awful lot of time being wasted by Wales’ mid-fielders and defenders simply passing the ball between themselves without even looking to see if someone else also wearing a red shirt was in, or moving towards, an attacking position near, or at least nearer, the Norway goal, and so might if given the ball be able to try scoring another goal.
Also superb analysis throughout by Rob Earnshaw on BBC TV – left me thinking how wonderful if he could be persuaded to rejoin the Bluebirds and carry on being an adviser about what and when players could and should be doing on the pitch!