Wales saw off a very limited and niggly (make that dirty) Latvian team by 2-0 in Riga tonight to keep their faint hopes of a second place finish alive following the damage sustained by the two very poor defeats by Armenia and Turkey in June.
On this evidence, Latvia have gone backwards since we beat them 1-0 in Cardiff back in March. They weren’t great then, but they gave us some awkward moments in the closing minutes of the game. At the time, it was possible to see them taking points off the likes of Turkey and Armenia, but it’s now played five, lost five for them and there must be every chance that they’ll not break their points duck in their three remaining games.
Croatia did us a bit of a favour by winning 1-0 in Armenia earlier today and, in doing so, they took charge of the group, as they have a game in hand on everyone else and lead the group on goal difference from Turkey who dropped home points when drawing 1-1 with Armenia on Friday, Croatia’s 5-0 win over on the same day effectively gives them another point because it’s hard to see the sides that are most likely battling for a second place finish improving their goal difference sufficiently to match the Croatians who have to face Latvia for a second time.
As far as Wales are concerned, I’d say they need something like seven points from their last three matches to give themselves a realistic chance of finishing runners up in the group. It seems to me that we are going to have to go to Armenia in November and win, then three days later, we need to repeat our win over the Turks in the 2021 Euros. Before those two games though, we need to repeat the 1-1 home draw with Croatia in 2019.
What are the chances of Wales managing to get those three results or a combination that enables us to get those seven points? Not that good, if you consider how we’ve played in the group so far and the evidence of today’s performance.
While Wales undoubtedly deserved tonight’s win, their finishing left much to be desired- it needed what was a pretty cheap penalty to separate the teams until well into added time when there was a very popular second goal scored by David Brooks.
The match stats make for interesting reading with Wales having 58 per cent possession, there was a twenty seven to eight lead for them in the goal attempt categories, while on target efforts went our way by nine to two. Latvia committed fifteen fouls against our eight, while the Latvians won hands down when it came to bookings by 6-1.
Nine on target efforts from a team that scored twice rather suggests that the opposing goalkeeper has had a good game and there were some good saves from Ozols in the Latvian goal, but the main reason Wales had to wait so long before victory was confirmed was their sub standard finishing.
For about half an hour, Wales played well, but the poor finishing was there from the first few minutes as Brennan Johnson was sent through by an astute ball from Ethan Ampadu (our best player I reckon).
Sadly, Johnson, who cost Spurs £ 50 million on transfer deadline day,, did not have his shooting boots on tonight and so the player who, with some justification, would be portrayed as Wales nearest thing to another Gareth Bale was responsible for a fair proportion of off target efforts as, once again, his finishing for his country remains at odds with what we saw from him at Forest last season.
Ben Davies had a very presentable early chance as well as he was, if anything, too deliberate with his header from six yards out after Chris Mepham had nodded a Harry Wilson corner to him . Wilson and Nico Williams were guilty of not getting their timings right as well as early efforts were not good enough to trouble the Latvians too seriously.
With Ampadu and Jordan James, making an impressive first competitive start for his country, running things in the middle of the park, Wales, effectively, were able to do as they pleased on two thirds of the pitch, but progress in the final third was tougher.
Wales’ we’re just beginning to show a few signs of frustration when a great bit of never say die play by Connor Roberts as he did well to flick an over hit long diagonal ball by Aaron Ramsey up into the air to allow Wilson to challenge for it some twelve yards out. Given Wilson is not the best in the air, there was no great danger for the Latvians at this time, but centreback Dubra, showing the lack of intelligence that was apparent in so much of the Latvians over physical approach, barged into the former City man to give the referee a decision to make when the whole situation could have been handled relatively easily with a bit of sensible defending,
The only surprise coming from the fact that the Slovakian referee Michal Okenas pointed to the spot came from the fact that it was the away side getting the decision, but, in this instance at least, the erratic official got his decision right and it was left to Aaron Ramsey to confidently send the keeper the wrong way.
For a while at least, Wales threatened to run away with things. It was pleasing to see left wing back Williams crossing for right wing back Conor Roberts to get in a good header that brought out one of Ozols’ better saves. Johnson shot wide from a good position about twelve yards out and within seconds, Wilson was running on to a through ball to hit a well struck shot that brought an easier save out of the overworked home keeper.
Latvia couldn’t continue to be as poor and the minutes before half time saw their best spell of the match as Gavin Ward made a bit of a meal of a header by Ikaunieks and a couple of dangerous crosses flew across the Welsh goal with no home player able to get a decisive touch.
The early signs after the break were good as Johnson twice more went close, but then, just three minutes into the second period, Ramsey went off and was replaced by Brooks. Although there looked to be no obvious injury involved, players don’t tend to get taken off for tactical reasons after forty eight minutes, so you had to assume that an injury, with the consequences it might bring for Cardiff City, was the reason for the change (Ramsey said after the game that his withdrawal was precautionary and he should be fine for Saturday’s south Wales derby).
Whatever the seriousness of Ramsey’s injury, Wales were never to recapture the domination of the first third of the game. They were still better than Latvia, but it became a bitty stop, start affair which probably did little to help the home team’s efforts to create some sort of forwards momentum.
However, the truth was that the majority of the hold ups were caused by Welsh players requiring treatment for a succession of knocks and bumps received because their hosts were piling into challenges rather than trying to impose themselves on the game.
The bookings mounted up for the Latvians as a series of fouls of differing degrees of seriousness were committed, but, quite clearly, the worst of them was committed by Ikaunieks who, after being embarrassed by James winning the ball off him so easily, took a hack at the Birmingham youngster which caught him around the knee area.
A yellow card was immediately produced, but it was no surprise when the VAR official recommended that the ref take a second look at the incident as a more severe punishment may be required. One more look should have convinced the referee to produce his red card, but as he viewed what must have been the fifteenth replay he’d seen, I started to think “he’s not going to do anything”. It was still a bit of a shock to see him signal for the game to restart, but the referee clearly had his doubts (what they were, I cannot begin to imagine), but it was almost inevitable that Ikanieks came as close as anyone to scoring for the home side when his shot beat Ward and the net rippled, but only because it had hit the side netting and then rebounded off an advertising board right behind the goal which caused it to look for a second as if the keeper had let one in on his near post.
Wakes’ anger at the lack of a red card for the Latvian number ten may well have been responsible for an upping of Welsh attacking intensity which saw Johnson and Williams denied by Ozols and Brooks missed a great chance when the ball dropped to him following the second of those saves, but he could not get his foot right over the ball and so it flew harmlessly over.
Wales were always vulnerable while it remained 1-0, but Wilson helped to calm any nerves as he won he ball out on the left (did he foul his opponent?) and ran thirty yards to slip a short pass through to Brooks who dinked a lovely shot over the advancing Ozols to make it 2-0 with a quality of finish completely at odds with what had been seen from his team beforehand.
Although he’d returned months ago following the successful treatment of the leukemia he’d suffered from, this felt like the moment Wales got the gifted Brooks back – he’s a player who has had rotten luck in recent years and you only hope now that he is able to fulfil the obvious talent he has from now on while representing his club and country.
So, if he ever was on a hook (not sure he was really), Rob Page has probably wriggled off it after an international break which saw Wales keep two clean sheets while getting a draw and a win. After the game, the Welsh manager said that the two games showed that the squad enjoy playing under his management and talked about them having been “ruthless” against Latvia – not sure that’s the right word to use though, Page may be right about them enjoying playing for him, but ruthless was the last thing Wales were last night, it was their lack of the killer touch which ensured that a game which they should have been out of sight in, was still not won after ninety plus minutes and it’s hard to see us getting the results we need from the next three matches if we continue to be as profligate in front of goal as we were tonight.
Wales have also been playing at age group level. The under 21s play in Lithuania later on Tuesday having beaten the Liechtenstein under 23 team 4-0 in a friendly at Rodney Parade on Friday with two of the goals coming from Rubin Colwill, whose brother Joel made a promising debut at this level in midfield alongside former City Academy member Charlie Crew. Cian Ashford also played for the last twenty minutes or so and, after a quiet start, was able to show what he can contribute as the game drew to a close.
There was very good City representation in the Welsh Under 19 team which travelled to Finland to take on the home team in a pair of Under 19 internationals. There were six City players in the starting line up for Friday’s first game which was deservedly won 1-0 by the Finns and five in the rematch in which the Welsh gained their revenge in another match which produced just the one goal.
Thanks as ever, Paul. You summed it up perfectly in your choice of adjective for the Latvians… viz… ‘limited’.
They had looked underwhelming when parking their fleet of buses at the CCS a few months back… but now with the onus on them to play more positively, they seemed nonplussed. As you suggest, they looked like they’d gone backwards since the Spring.
To be frank, I think any EPL team playing them on Latvian turf last night, would have won without getting out of second gear… and that goes for the top 6 teams in the Championship too. That it was only 1-0 to Wales until injury time (and that from a penalty) tells us a lot about our lack of a cutting edge.
If Kieffer had been there it might have been a bit of a different story, but Johnson for all his speed and hard work, does not strike me as a centre forward.
Leastways, not yet. But he has gone to a club with a manager who knows a bit about alchemy… so all bets are off on Brennan not making a central striker. But I suspect Spurs will keep Son in the Kane role, and leave Johnson to try to run with Tottenham chalk on his boots in the tradition of his fellow countrymen Terry Medwin and the great Cliff Jones.
That said, even with him as a winger, I’d need convincing that he is any more gifted than his clubmate, Josh Bowler who we are currently fostering at City. I mean in terms of RAW TALENT of course… I well realise that lack of consistency and application could well be the reason why one guy is now worth £40m and the other no more than a tenth of that.
Nice to see Paul, your long time favourite Ampadu have perhaps his best ever game for Wales last night. You are right: he was Wales’ best player. Mind you, one observes his performance was against the weakest opponents he has faced. Still, that said, I drooled over that sublime long pass through to Johnson in the first half which deserved better. Along with the Brooks dink, it was the standout moment of the game.
A few other random thoughts before signing off…
I was banging on recently of the aesthetic appeal of City’s ‘plum’ away colours. Well gee… I am not sure if this Wales away strip, doesn’t even pip it by a short head…!! Absolutely beautiful. And it is the trimming that is the masterstroke… the three colours of our national flag framing the whole thing.
And of course, a gorgeous playing kit deserves a glorious physical specimen to fill it. And in Aaron Ramsey we have a footballer who looks like he has just stepped off a Hollywood backlot. I reckon he must be the most handsome Cardiff City footballer of my lifetime… though I recall the late Mel Charles used to set female pulses racing back in the day… and the young Alan Harrington too.
But for sure, when a football strip is worn by a handsome footballer, it really does wonders for the appeal of that outfit. For instance, no City goalkeeping kit has ever been better modelled than the pastel shade ensembles favoured by Mark Etheridge.
(Gosh, am I starting to ‘bat for the other side’? Alas I think not… for at 76 and with diabetes 2, the truth is I have been going into bat for many years with one of the late Geoffrey Howe’s ‘broken bats’…so I can hardly switch allegiances now.)
And before putting down my pen…
I want to mention N. Williams and Riga.
First the footballer… Paul, the way to get the spelling of his first name right, is to refuse to pronounce it like the sheep out there… I always call him Neck-o… I reserve the name Neek-o for the German songstress who used to accompany my acid trips circa 1971 when she was the female vocalist in that mesmeric American band, The Velvet Underground. (American? Well yes… even though she had a fellow European in that talented boy from Garnant… John Cale. ‘Mesmeric?’ Well, yes… though truth to tell, only under LSD… put a gun to my head today and ask me to whistle any tune off their first album and I’d say ‘shoot me now, and get it over with!’)
And a word on Riga. Amazing to think of such a fabulous city being represented by such a national stadium. All that money we UK taxpayers ploughed into the Baltic States following their accession to the EU in 2004 could surely have been diverted – as so much other EU funding was – into building a national stadium, worthy of the name. Because I reckon Riga deserves it… for it is an impressive city, with a stunning Old Town, and the best central market I have encountered anywhere in Europe… it is housed in five giant former Zeppelin hangars… with an atmosphere to make even that of the great Swansea Market seem… ‘a little understated’.
So go to Riga… you’ll enjoy it. And whilst there, jump on the train for the short journey to the coastal resort of Jürmala. An unforgettable place much favoured in its day by members of the Soviet Politburo… their grand dachas still stand, though they themselves are six feet under. Also still standing is the Soviet hotel for workers to recuperate (built in the style of the Brutalist School) standing right on the beach. Built for honourable reasons… like the South Wales Miners’ wonderful old place in Rest Bay, Porthcawl, near to the golf course, which I believe is no longer a place for heroic sufferers of pneumoconiosis, but is now given over to yuppie apartments… mind you, they will have to ‘go some’ to beat my favourite building in all Wales, just a mile away… viz… the ‘bottle bank’ apartments on Porthcawl’s Esplanade.
Gee… I am ‘Dai-gressing’… I wanted to say this on the Latvia stadium….
It was purpose built in 2000 as the home of Latvia’s top team… who went on to win the Latvian league title the next 14 years in succession before a spectacular fall from grace seeing them kicked out of the top league due to financial irregularities, and the team going bust and being wound up in 2016.
One thing for sure, building that 10,000 seater did not bankrupt them…!!
Right… time to put down my pen and pick up my knife and fork.
TTFN,
Dai.
Paul et al – Nothing to add following your usual summary of last night’s proceedings, but I would wish to comment about this afternoon’s efforts by the City’s U21s.
The time is currently 18.31 p.m. and there is no result available on “News Now” or the City website as to how are youngsters got on. So I visited the Sheffield Utd website, not only learnt of the result, but was able to view highlights which made for a rather sad watch as we lost 6-2.
Why, oh why, is it that are Club are so dilatory in their reporting of non first team affairs as this is not the first time I have had to research elsewhere for news of our young performers. Some of us care.
Not got much time this morning, so I’m going to keep my responses to your most welcome posts quite brief. Lindsay, nothing I can contribute really regarding Brayley Reynolds, except to express some surprise that I knew so little about him as he seems to have made enough of an impact at first team level for his name to crop up from time to time in the conversations I had with my parents about the players they used to watch – a possible explanation is down to me, my mum went to very few games after having me in February 1956 and I was told that the increased need for money following my birth meant that my Dad (a fireman with what I think was called British Rail then) spent lots of weekends working overtime in Leamington, so it might well have been that they saw barely any more of Brayley Reynolds playing than I did!
Dai, it seems Bowler will be ready to return for Saturday’s derby (but not O’Dowda and the much missed Robinson I’m afraid), I would have thought he was most likely to be one of the subs.
I’m not sure I would call Ampadu a favourite of mine. In fact, I’ve had a few arguments with a messageboard poster who talks about him as if he’s a future world superstar down the years. There were some huge claims being made about Ampadu just under ten years ago and, to be fair, it would have been almost impossible for him to live up to them, but he’s a definite contender to become our record cap holder by the time he retires . He was very good on Monday I thought and, although it might be case of me getting five from adding two and two together, I reckoned there were signs of him benefitting from having his career sorted out with a permanent move (I think continuously being loaned out by a top six club can make you go stale) – central midfield is a huge area of concern for Wales currently, but maybe Ampadu and James are a combination that will help ensure that things are not as bad as I fear they might be in that area?
Never used to listen to the Velvet Underground under the influence of LSD, but maybe I should have! A partial excuse regarding Mr Williams is that you can put both of the possible spellings into Google and the wrong spelling will return some references to our player, not the winger Liverpool are reported to be interested in – I’ll try and remember your “Necko”, but I fear it’s a mistake I’ll be repeating in the future.
Thirty years ago, I found it a little confusing trying to keep track of all of the new international football teams which emerged from the break up of the Soviet Union. There were two main things I eventually settled on as the main means of recognising Latvia. First was their, I think, unique shirt colour for an international team and the other was their truly bizarre stadium with what I can only assume to be an office block in one corner (given when you say it was built, you can see how long it took me to finally figure out which one of the newbies Latvia was!).
BJA, I’ll agree with you to the extent that City’s Academy Twitter account (will never call it X!) has become a bit of a waste of time in the last season or two, but the club website usually carries a preview of upcoming under 21 games (it’s very rare that the under 18s get one mind). The one for yesterday’s game also mentioned that Sheffield United’s You Tube channel were streaming the game for free, so I got to watch most of it (the occasional away match is streamed, so it’s always worth going to the club site to read the preview)- I started watching at about a quarter of an hour after kick off and the first thing I saw was the ball entering the net to put the home side 3-0 up, so it could have been worse than it turned out. By the end, there was no doubting that we were a well beaten side. but, in that preview piece I mentioned, Darren Purse talked about how many of the usual candidates for under 21 selection were away on international duty (for example, half of the starting elevens for a couple of friendlies Wales had at under 19 level in Finland in recent days were City players). So, the City team for yesterday’s match was somewhat cobbled together – James Crole was probably the most senior player after the outcast Vontae Campbell and there were a lot more first year scholars involved than you’d normally see. Under the circumstances, City did really well to get back to 3-2 thanks a couple of very nice goals (one of which was scored by ex England player Andy Johnson’s son) before running out of steam to concede three more goals in quick succession.
Buongiorno all MAYAns,
BJA is right to question the club’s website. But just as culpable surely is the local press? It strikes me that WalesOnline (and ergo, Reach plc) cannot escape culpability.
Indeed this very week their football comments section reveals readers making similar points to that of BJA re the non reporting of the results of other games at club and national level.
No doubt Paul Abbandonato has a lot of clout. For one thing he has kept Megan Feringa in a job, ignoring the philistine mob who want her – at least – railed in.*. And it is time that Paul cracked the whip in the pages there.
Why for instance is Newport County so poorly reported… sometimes I search in vain for any report at all of their latest EFL game? Why for instance were there no Cardiff player ratings after the Ipswich capitulation? And, on the subject of ratings, why did he not fire his Swansea reporter about a year ago for giving player ratings of 6 for every member of the team, and the subs too? I kind of get it, that the reporter wanted to express his ennui at the uninspired team performance, but ‘come off it’ my dear Swansea reporter, you are guilty of a dereliction of duty there… for it is surely statistically impossible for every member of the playing squad that day to score the same rating, given that there are ten levels of variation to choose from with every player?
* as it happens, I can see where her detractors are coming from… but hey, I will cut her lots of slack for at least making an effort… something I would like to see Paul’s erstwhile contributors doing again. It is not enough folks to happily receive Paul’s splendid serves: you have a bounden duty to ‘return serve’ and let an engaging rally result…!! The internet is full of fancy bells and whistles blogs, with page after page of ‘comment please’ left blank. So sad. Yes I get it that many blogs ask for no comments at all… these are often blogs from the pens of barrack-room lawyers who would regard anyone contradicting them as a personal affront, but when a blog asks for comments, do the Christian thing and bloody well RESPOND. Don’t be a taker all your lives… be a giver too. Paul ain’t asking that you slavishly echo his opinions… he just likes to know he is not in an echo chamber. So c’mon. It ain’t difficult… take a word for a walk… and you will soon have a sentence, and then a paragraph. He deserves to know his readers have not fallen asleep reading his very far from sleep-inducing prose.
But back to the American lass: look, there is clearly an intellect at work there, and if her rhetorical style sometimes misses by a mile, who cares? What real harm is done? At least this lady knows the difference between ‘fazed and phased’, ‘poser and poseur’, ‘disinterested and uninterested’… which is more than one can say for some of her Reach plc colleagues.
TTFN,
Dai
Oops… to avoid confusion…
… in the second line of my postscript above, I forgot to to insert the word OUR (in block caps) before the word ‘Paul’.
Yes I guess it is fairly obvious, but as I had been mentioning Paul Abbandonato earlier in my piece, then at very least, I should not have been so clumsy.
DW
Just to say Dai that Paul Abbandonato no longer works at Wales Online. He’s pretty active on what I’ll always call Twitter these days and confirmed about ten days ago that he’d just worked his last day with Wales Online and I believe he’s decided to go freelance.
I share many of your reservations about Wales Online’s reporting (they seem to have decided to leave Newport County reporting to the Argus and their Glamorgan coverage is, being charitable, minimal). I do sympathise to a degree though because you only have to look at other regional papers under the same ownership to see that the football reporting is very formulaic with inane stuff like “Five things we learned from……… game with ………… on Saturday, player ratings and transfer gossip which often seems to have been lifted off messageboards. It’s mostly dross, but, now and again, you’d get a good, informative story from the likes of Glen Williams and Paul Abbandonato – I think it must be a very frustrating place to work at if you want to be the sort of sports journalist I wanted to be for a short time in my youth. My inspiration was always what I read in the Echo from the likes of Peter Jackson and Joe Lovejoy (not so much the match report in the Football Echo on the Saturday, but more the reaction pieces on a Monday).
Paul, compadre,
Thanks for the ‘hot off the press’ news about Mr. Abbandonato. And I am sure you are right in your view that Reach plc have such a stranglehold on their sports journalists that they are all struggling to express themselves, in these days of print journalism being in its death throes, due to the haemorrhaging of circulation figures and massive drop- off in advertising.
But that explanation only goes so far… this is called ‘WalesOnline’ remember… so Reach plc have no ‘space limitations’ excuse for not letting their journalists have their head and express themselves fully.
The sad fact is that so many folk don’t want to read print newspapers… and nothing exemplifies this change in reading habits better than the travails of the London Evening Standard.
It made an incredibly bold move in 2009 in becoming a free newspaper after 4pm to all folk living and working in Central London. To this day, you will still find it being handed out free outside Central London tube stations. So workers commuting home to the outer suburbs every night, cancelled their (paid for) home delivery and picked up the freebie instead.
A disastrous business move one would think? Surprisingly no, not initially anyway… as advertisers swooned at the prospect of a massively increased circulation amongst the A,B and C1 socioeconomic groupings (folk with money to spend) that they were now getting through to.
And thus at first, the advertisers’ shilling was rolling in.
But a look at the Standard’s circulation figures since 2019, are most illuminating. The figure for the previous year issued in 2021 and 2022 saw it fall off a cliff ( yes, I know that strict Lockdowns and WFH were major factors) but the figure issued this year for 2022 startlingly shows a further decline… now showing less than half the print readers it had just 4 years previously… which makes one wonder whether folk have just lost the ‘print newspaper’ habit.
Certainly, I would not want to be a young man entering the journalism profession now.
Finally, talking of South Wales Echo football writers, I reckon that Peter Corrigan was as good as any, and certainly his was the name to make the biggest mark on Fleet Street.
Oh, before closing… I have something to say re the weekend game… I think I will post it at the bottom of your Cardiff v Swansea quiz, when it appears… although right now, Thursday 11.14am it has not appeared.
It contains a spellbindingly good link to a still very astute 88 year old woman talking about the 1958;World Cup.
TTFN,
Dai.