Wales have been at a higher level than their norm for just about a decade now. It was June 2015 when Gareth Bale’s goal beat Belgium at Cardiff City Stadium and I’d say that was the night when the country began to expect qualification for a major tournament.

Since then, we’ve moved up a level. A place in the World’s top thirty has become the norm and there have been some great occasions to match anything in our history.

However, whereas lesser Welsh sides would bang in a hatful against the likes of San Marino every now and again, this better side tend to be efficient, rather than spectacular, when taking on the minnows of the game.

This time last year, we drew 0-0 with Gibraltar in a match which, more than any other, did for then manager, Robert Page. That embarrassment was an exception though – we get the job done against the lesser lights, but the modern Wales would normally win a match like Gibraltar one or two nil, not the five or six that their predecessors sometimes used to come up with.

Quite why we don’t bang in the number of goals we might expect against the likes of Gibraltar and tonight’s opponents, Lietchtenstein, is hard to answer. I think defences at international level are better organized than they were, but the modern Wales very rarely thrash anyone – the biggest win I can remember in the last decade is 6-0 over a China side that, from memory, had quite a high ranking at the time.

It wasn’t as if Wales played poorly tonight in beating Lietchtenstein 3-0 at Cardiff City Stadium. The visitors defended better than you’d expect a team ranked outside that toptwo hundred to do, especially in the first half, and their goalkeeper Benjamin Buchel had a fine game, but, further forward, the stats told a completely one sided story. Wales had twenty six goal attempts (eleven of them on target) to nil, but, for me, the more telling stat was the number of touches for both teams in the opposition’s penalty area – fifty four to nil!

Lietchtenstein defended deep and in numbers with the pattern set early on as Sorba Thomas established a domination over his marker out on the Welsh left by the o;d fashioned, but entirely welcome for me, method of knocking the ball past his opponent and beating him for. pace on the outside. Thomas was almost one hundred per cent successful in that approach as he constantly got to the bye line to pull back crosses, but, unfortunately and unusually, his crosses were not that accurate.

Thomas seeing so much of the ball meant that Neco Williams was not seen that much in attacking positions early on and then the full back, who I’d say has been Wales’ best player this season, suffered what looked like a serious ankle injury which will surely rule him out of contention for Monday’s visit to Belgium.

Coventry’s Jay De Silva replaced Williams and he also was prepared to let Thomas do his thing as the attacks, good saves and close misses mounted up. Despite this, it was beginning to look like Lietchtenstein were going to reach the haven of half time with the game still goalless, but a goal from an unusual source gave Wales the lead on thirty nine minutes.

If Thomas’s crossing from open play was a little short of his best, his crossing from corners was good and when he swung one into the far post, Joe Rodon netted with a powerful header to score his first international goal on his fiftieth start for his country.

The second half continued in the same vein and a burst of two goals in three minutes half way through it completing a win which could and probably should have been bigger than 3-0.

De Silva made his most effective contribution with a good cross to the far post that was perfect for Harry Wilson to attack as he headed home from six yards and, another sub, David Brooks, played a part in the build up to the third goal when the influential Josh Cullen’s cross gave him the opportunity to volley towards goal, only for Buchel to make another save which fell into the path of Kieffer Moore who was left with a simple chance from eight yards.

Wales got a little careless in the last quarter of the game, but what has to be seen as a good night for the team got better late on with news of a late equaliser for North Macedonia against group favourites Belgium which means they could only match our 1-1 draw against the Macedonians away from home.

There were six City players in the Welsh under 21 squad which faced Norway in a friendly game this afternoon with Cian Ashford, Dylan Lawlor and Joel Colwill starting what turned out to be a disappointing 4-0 loss.

As for the shambles that is Cardiff City, we do at least know that there is going to be a week’s warm weather training in Spain in early July which will include a game against opponents yet to be named – we also know that Cambridge United have confirmed they will be playing a behind closed doors game against us during their training week in south Wales.

The search for our new manager drags on and on and on though, but an end to the slog which has turned into a bore looks to be in sight as social media has been full of claims that Aaron Ramsey will get the job after Nathan Jones signed a five year contract at Charlton. It was thought originally that Ramsey’s appointment would be confirmed today, but it seems that the sorry affair will drag into another week.

It was slipshod, scrappy and, in the end, lucky, but at least Wales got the three points as they edged to a 1-0 win in Estonia tonight while the Czech Republic were winning their match in Belarus 2-0 which means that the advantage they enjoyed in goal difference and goals scored beforehand has stretched slightly.

We now finish next month with home games against Belarus and Belgium and, with the first named looking like the weakest team in the group, perhaps the goal difference can be improved enough to mean that combined with Estonia, hopefully, proving to be as difficult a nut to crack for the Czechs as they have been for us, we may have the edge going into what will be a very tough encounter with the Belgians.

However, given that we don’t win big these days, the far more realistic scenario has to be that we’re going to have to avoid defeat against the Belgians to take second place and, given our general level of performance in this qualifying campaign, that seems too tall an order to me.

Granted, we’ve done well against the Belgians in home qualifying ties down the years and there is certainly evidence that Belgium’s golden generation is getting towards the end of the line, but, unlike Wales teams during the second half of the previous decade, we’ve become a side with a big mistake in us and this together with our poor scoring record makes me think it’ll be a third placed finish for us.

The good news for Wales and Cardiff City is that Keiffer Moore got himself on the scoresheet. The old line is about how an out of form striker can get back in the groove by the ball hitting him on the backside and rebounding into the net, well, it wasn’t quite like that tonight with Keiffer, but his goal certainly wasn’t a thing of beauty.

It came in the twelfth minute and, in truth, Wales offered little going forward after that. Before the goal, Harry Wilson had sent a free kick narrowly over the bar and Connor Roberts had seen a twenty yard left footed effort turned around the post by Estonia’s impressive young goalkeeper Karl Hein.

From the resultant corner, Chris Mepham got in a. header which Moore got a touch to and the clearance which followed was nodded on by Aaron Ramsey only for a defender to knock the ball off the line into the path of Moore, who took a touch before stabbing home unconvincingly from about a yard out.

Soon afterwards, Moore had a near post flick from a Roberts cross which was probably going wide even though Hein dived on the ball and was left with a bloody nose and eye injury, which eventually forced him off, in the second half when, in a bizarre incident, the Swiss referee Sandro Scharer penalised Moore, yet booked home defender Kuusk when his arm made contact with the striker’s face in the Estonian penalty area.

I wasn’t convinced that it was a penalty, but then Scharer saw fit to yellow card Moore later on, thereby ruling him out of the Belarus match because of a suspension, for a “foul” that was nowhere near as bad as Kuusk’s. The booking was yet another example of why Moore would have found it impossible to have had any sort of successful career on mainland Europe because the officials on the continent are completely intolerant of how he plays.

That apart, I thought the ref was poor overall. As the saying goes, Estonia we’re not taking any prisoners in the early stages with a series of blatant fouls that Mr Scharer decided did not merit a caution, yet once he did show a first yellow card, six more followed, many for offences that weren’t as serious as the home side’s early clogging.

The home side were dirtier than Wales, yet only had three men booked to our four, but, in fairness, I must add that they were worth at least a draw on the night

In a game where so many Welsh players were a long way from their best, the villain of the piece on Friday, Danny Ward, was one of not many at all who could feel satisfied with his display. Ward was called into action inside a minute as he dived to keep out a Teniste effort from the corner of the penalty.

That incident was an early example of Welsh defensive slackness and it was soon followed by a dreadful error by Harry Wilson who passed straight to Zenjov who was presented with an open goal, but Rodon was able to get back to clear the resultant shot off the line.

The second half began very poorly and sloppily for Wales with Sorja being one of two home players left completely unmarked from a free kick and he should certainly have done better than head narrowly over.

Rodon and Mepham going for the same punt forward by Hein was another example of how what started off as all out attack according to Rob Page gradually turned into a case of hanging on to a narrow lead. Kail sent the chance created by the centrebacks’ blunder straight at Ward, but the keeper later made a great save to deny sub Siniyaskiy as he curled his shot towards the corner of the net.

As I mentioned before, Ward was one of very few Welshmen to play well. I thought Sorba Thomas, making his first start, did pretty well at left wing back, Joe Allen did okay and, that one mistake apart, Rodon was pretty solid, but the attacking vibrancy of Prague was missing and captain Ramsey was, understandably given how little football he’s played this season, quiet.

Meanwhile, the Under 19s came a cropper in their mini tournament in Norway on Sunday I’m afraid as they were beaten 5-0 by the hosts following their goalless draw against Georgia in their opening game. Taylor Jones and Caleb Hughes both started the game for a Welsh side which conceded four times in the second half.

Being fair, the answer to the question probably has to be “yes”, but only to a degree, because what happened after those first twenty minutes reflected well on both sides while also suggesting that Wales are becoming a side to be feared on the international stage. If Norway would rather have been somewhere else in those opening stages, the feeling did not last long once they had gone 2-0 down as they paid Wales the complement of going like for like with them by switching to 4-5-1 and then began to work their way back into the game. For three quarters of the match, there could be no doubts about Norway’s level of commitment – they were hard working, passed the ball neatly at times and had more than their fair share of possession as they pressed Wales back.

However, apart from a fine shot against the post by Mohammed Abdellaoue and one other incident, they caused Wales few problems in the first half and that one incident I mentioned offered a telling illustration into the contrast between the dilligent, but fairly predictable, Norwegian team and their vibrant and confident opponents. Norway were able to break from a Welsh corner and a fairly lucky bounce of the ball saw Portsmouth’s Erik Huseklepp presented with a clear run in on goal from the half way line – for a while it looked certain that the visitors would pull a goal back, but Adam Matthews showed not only the pace to catch his opponent very quickly, but then also the technique to win the ball cleanly when he knew that any mistiming of the challenge on his part would lead to an inevitable red card.

Okay, the keeper should have done better, but Gareth Bale's viscous volley for the first Welsh goal was an example of a confident player succeeding because he was good enough to to do something difficult and unexpected.*

Technique allied with pace, that’s what Matthews showed in that incident and that is what Wales had that their opponent’s didn’t. The technique was there for the Norwegians, but they were never able to show it while travelling at the same types of speed as some of the Welsh players did – for much of the time from the twenty minutes mark onwards, Norway were the team who had more possession, but, for the most part, they did not have the pace to seriously inconvenience Wales. There were a few wobbles from the home side after Wayne Hennessey’s awful mistake (with his poor showing at Man City recently, it’s not been a good fortnight for the usually reliable Wolves keeper) gifted Huseklepp a goal and Morten Gamst Pedersen hit the frame which keeps the net in place with a shot that looked to have beaten Hennessey.

With Norway chasing the equaliser though, there was always the chance that Wales could hit them on the counter and when they did, it was that combination of pace and technique that did for the visitors. Bale’s flick to Bellamy to start the move which led to the third goal was a lovely bit of skill, but from then on, the move looked fairly simple as the two players combined to leave sub Sam Vokes with the easy task of tapping in Bale’s cross. The thing is though that all of this was done while travelling at speeds most footballers cannot reach – Bellamy and Bale were able to deliver the perfect passes in circumstances that fully tested their techniques and Norway never had anyone capable of moving quickly enough to see if their technique was up to those sort of tasks.

The excellent Craig Bellamy is congratulated after his goal by Adam Matthews whose fine all round display left me with very mixed feelings - Dave Jones has a lot to answer for as far as this player is concerned.*

Vokes’ second goal a minute later was a reminder that Wales now have a depth to their squad that hasn’t been there in recent years. While the goal didn’t involve the pace I talked about, it did show a good technique in action and this is something that now runs throughout the side. Although his standards slipped a little following his error, Hennessey is one of the best kickers of a ball around amongst modern keepers. the defenders are all pretty comfortable in possession (watching Darcy Blake yesterday, all I can say is City must have some team if he cannot get in it), we have a midfield capable of not only keeping the ball, but also passing it with a quality that causes opponent’s real problems and have a target man who is hardly a spectacular player, but his part in Bale’s goal shows that he shouldn’t be underestimated with the ball at his feet.

It’s becoming the norm lately in these posts on Wales games for me to give credit to a manager who I must admit to having real doubts about until fairly recently. With the score at 2-1 and Wales looking a bit nervous, Gary Speed sent on Hal Robson-Kanu. When I saw the Reading player about to come on, I assumed it was going to be for Bellamy or Bale, but instead he went for Joe Allen (who played well enough, but, given all the fuss about his recent Swansea performances, I did expect a bit more from him). This seemed a very strange move to me as Aaron Ramsey dropped back and Bellamy switched to a more central role behind the lone striker, but it has to be said that the substitution worked a treat. As expected, Ramsey fitted in to his new role with no problems, while Robson-Kanu gave Wales even more pace on the break – it was an attacking substitution at a time when it must have been tempting to shore things up and all credit to Gary Speed for that.

Finally, Speed will be taking part in meetings to sort out the itinerary for Wales qualifying group for the 2014 World Cup and, as sixth seeds in a group of six, I doubt it if we will get our own way too often, but, such is the ability and confidence being shown by the team at the moment, it’s tempting to say let the other five teams do their worst as far as our schedule is concerned. Despite what I said about our improved squad depth earlier, the fact has to be faced that there are two or three players who we could not replace adequately if they weren’t available for any reason and, because of this, I’m reluctant to predict that we can finish in the top two of our group, but I can certainly see us having a big influence on who eventually makes it through – we are capable of beating anyone in the group on our day.

* pictures from http://www.walesonline.co.uk/