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Post by quetzal on Mar 27, 2024 0:39:31 GMT
I like all the Welsh clubs. No favourite. I thought we missed a trick by not having Colwill on the bench. Would have given us something different.
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Post by cynonvalley on Mar 27, 2024 0:43:07 GMT
Johnson and Brooks off, both potential pen takers. Once Connor Roberts was injured and Dan James had to play right back, that was it.
Ah well
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Post by ddirpytnop on Mar 27, 2024 0:43:58 GMT
I like all the Welsh clubs. No favourite. I thought we missed a trick by not having Colwill on the bench. Would have given us something different. I think he needs to show more when playing for his club in order to be considered. At U21 level he looks exceptional but he's yet to do enough to deserve a place with the seniors. |
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Post by robin1864 on Mar 27, 2024 1:07:02 GMT
A minor moan in the grand scheme of things, but could we stop devaluing the anthem by singing it constantly?
It was genuinely spine-tingling all those years ago when sung spontaneously against Belgium and other moments when we've been cruising, but now it just seems as though we've got nothing else to sing and it's bordering on England singing the great escape theme every two minutes.
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Post by jono on Mar 27, 2024 1:07:46 GMT
Disappointing really. We never gave it a real go tonight. Too scared to lose. We've royally messed up this campaign.
Page says we were one kick from qualifying. We weren't. We were one kick from making it 5-5 and continuing the shootout.
Believe we must now go in a new direction. He will probably survive though.
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Post by quetzal on Mar 27, 2024 1:12:12 GMT
A minor moan in the grand scheme of things, but could we stop devaluing the anthem by singing it constantly? It was genuinely spine-tingling all those years ago when sung spontaneously against Belgium and other moments when we've been cruising, but now it just seems as though we've got nothing else to sing and it's bordering on England singing the great escape theme every two minutes. That was the fault of the announcer before the pens. Blasted the start on the tannoy. But during the game yeah I agree. We need to respect it. |
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Post by cymro on Mar 27, 2024 1:25:33 GMT
I never had a good feeling about these playoffs from the start, so I'm at peace with it. After the Finland game I've been feeling in my heart all week that this would go to pens and so it did. Ultimately someone has to miss one and it was effectively sudden death by the time James took it so it is what it is. The campaign was wildly inconsistent and based on that I always thought we'd struggle to string 2 top performances together consecutively. I'm not disappointed, just accepting that this is where we are at. Promising future but next campaign won't be any easier obviously as it's a world cup! 4 years time, qualifying for our home Euros would be very special and I think we can do that. Onwards and upwards.
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Post by pclaude on Mar 27, 2024 1:33:27 GMT
Yep the booing made me ashamed as a Welsh fan for the first time. Really bizarre and out of place You obviously weren’t there then. Or have zero idea why flares are roundly disliked amongst the fan base. |
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Post by pclaude on Mar 27, 2024 1:35:38 GMT
Johnson and Brooks off, both potential pen takers. Once Connor Roberts was injured and Dan James had to play right back, that was it. Ah well He didnt have to play there. There were other options. Someone else going there, or 4-3-3. It totally sucked the life out of us. |
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Post by pclaude on Mar 27, 2024 1:39:20 GMT
No blame anywhere, we did well to get ourselves into this position after only taking 1 point off Armenia, but 4 off Croatia, which is essentially the crux of the matter. Number one, their penalties were all technically excellent & the longer the shootout had gone on, the more likely they would keep scoring & we wouldn’t. Number two, Rambo for Brooks would have been my change with penalties in mind, but I bet he can barely jog, so fair enough. And number three, since when do we boo anthems? Don’t turn us into England Lite please, I’m not interested in supporting a team that has fans that don’t have respect for others, we are better than that. Not there I take it were you? The booing, rightly, started when they lit about 6 flares. |
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Post by jimmytaff on Mar 27, 2024 1:48:08 GMT
I like all the Welsh clubs. No favourite. I thought we missed a trick by not having Colwill on the bench. Would have given us something different. I think he needs to show more when playing for his club in order to be considered. At U21 level he looks exceptional but he's yet to do enough to deserve a place with the seniors. Fair point but Matando had a spot and was never going to play today. |
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Post by underwood on Mar 27, 2024 6:34:22 GMT
No blame anywhere, we did well to get ourselves into this position after only taking 1 point off Armenia, but 4 off Croatia, which is essentially the crux of the matter. Number one, their penalties were all technically excellent & the longer the shootout had gone on, the more likely they would keep scoring & we wouldn’t. Number two, Rambo for Brooks would have been my change with penalties in mind, but I bet he can barely jog, so fair enough. And number three, since when do we boo anthems? Don’t turn us into England Lite please, I’m not interested in supporting a team that has fans that don’t have respect for others, we are better than that. Not there I take it were you? The booing, rightly, started when they lit about 6 flares. I was there thank you, as I was last Thursday when smoke bombs were let off after we scored our first. Don’t recall any booing then. Boo the security outside the away end for not doing their jobs properly if you want to vent your anger, not an anthem. |
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Post by njdragon on Mar 27, 2024 6:45:21 GMT
Not there I take it were you? The booing, rightly, started when they lit about 6 flares. I was there thank you, as I was last Thursday when smoke bombs were let off after we scored our first. Don’t recall any booing then. Boo the security outside the away end for not doing their jobs properly if you want to vent your anger, not an anthem. The booing started before the anthem when they lit those flares. Was certainly directed at them lighting flares but looked like we were booing the anthem |
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Post by quetzal on Mar 27, 2024 7:01:15 GMT
Congratulations to Poland, Georgia and Ukraine. Why couldn’t Poland take penalties like Greece. I watched the pens again. Danny Ward never got a sniff! Not even close.
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Post by aberbeeg on Mar 27, 2024 7:03:26 GMT
It’s gutting to lose in that manner BUT we looked disjointed up front and really never got going in the same fashion we did against Finland. Partly due to how the Poles set up and partly because Moore was knackered by around 60 mins.
Again Pages in game management comes into question and the changes he made never really helped us or had the impact we wanted.
I think Page has now become similar to Southgate where his stock is actually much higher than how good he actually is. No doubt the FAW will keep faith though partly because he’s the cheapest option.
Onwards and upwards
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Post by welshrover on Mar 27, 2024 7:21:25 GMT
Do we think the likes of Hennessey and Ramsey may now call it a day given their ages and another tournament is two years away.
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Post by quetzal on Mar 27, 2024 7:30:03 GMT
Do we think the likes of Hennessey and Ramsey may now call it a day given their ages and another tournament is two years away. I think so. And mighty fine careers for Cymru. Ramsey’s injury at Stoke ultimately cost him 100 caps. |
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Post by erasedcitizen on Mar 27, 2024 7:34:33 GMT
Johnson and Brooks off, both potential pen takers. Once Connor Roberts was injured and Dan James had to play right back, that was it. Ah well He didnt have to play there. There were other options. Someone else going there, or 4-3-3. It totally sucked the life out of us. 4-3-3 was definitely the play at that point. Page is very limited with his tactical knowledge, he's shown it time and time again. Johnson off after an hour. He was having one of his best games in a Wales shirt and James just brought our overall ability-level down. Bringing Brooks on then taking him off. I don't care if he was ill beforehand, bring Broadhead on at that time if he is. Not diverting from plan A during the whole 120 minutes. We created nothing after than wonder-save in the 2nd half. Moore had ran his race after 70 minutes and was pretty much useless after that. Not his fault, he'd put in the effort until that point. If we can attract better then I think Page has to go so we can give a new manager pretty much a year before the WC qualifiers. We act way too 'small-time' with Page there but I think these players are capable of qualifying for a World Cup with the right guidance. My choices would be Osian or Bellamy, I feel the latter would be difficult to bring in now (though Kompany getting the chop could make it doable) but Osian could be a go-er. It's his dream job to manage Wales and now is the most likely time for him. I feel we aren't too far from seeing him become too expensive too. |
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Post by iot on Mar 27, 2024 7:51:27 GMT
I haven't looked at the forum since before the game - don't think I have the stomach for it. Twitter is 99% Page Out with a lot of nonsense being spouted. My thoughts on the game were:
- I wasn't feeling confident before the game as I felt they had the better squad of players and people were reading too much into their recent results. That said, I think we played quite well with the two teams evening each other out. To prevent them from having any decent chance in 120mins was really good. I felt they did look the slightly better side in general play, but there wasn't much at all in it.
- Given the above, I felt we looked pretty well-coached and had a decent gameplan, so Page and his backroom staff overall did a decent job imo which is why I feel really frustrated with a lot of the Twitter stuff. I just think there's a sense of entitlement creeping in and a lot of the reaction looks really spoilt. Seeing people commenting that 'we should have qualified automatically' even though we were up against two other very good (probably better on paper) sides, 'the game was there for the taking against a poor Polish side' even though they have a better set of players and are incredibly streetwise, and others saying Page has 'wasted the most talented squad we've ever had' - which is an absolute nonsense imo. Frankly, I think a lot of people are deluded and just don't know what they're talking about.
- That said, I felt Page did get a lot of calls wrong yesterday and there are many valid criticism that can be made. Squad selection to start with - why pick Rambo (ahead of Colwill, who I felt could have come on if Ramsey wasn't up to it) if he's not fit enough to come on. I was calling for him to come on for Wilson, who looked absolutely shattered, at the end of the 90 and I would have been more than happy to see Colwill come on if he were in the squad. On substitutions, I felt Page got them all wrong. I felt Johnson had been our best player, while Moore was another one that looked completely gone by the end of the match. So James instead of Moore looked a better move. Even still, Moore just had nothing left in the tank so we should have seen him replaced by Broadhead early in extra time imo. The whole Brooks situation is just odd - apparently he hadn't trained for days due to illness - which raises the question why he came on in the first place. Then there was the Dan James at wing back experiment - and what a time to try it! It's only the second time we've done it - it didn't work at all the first time in Armenia, and it didn't help us at all last night either, completely negating his attacking influence. I assumed we were moving to a back 4 when Brooks came on for Roberts, and that's what I think should have happened.
So now that the campaign's over and we've failed to qualify, I think it's entirely reasonable to consider whether we should go in a different direction. I think Page has done a good job overall, but if we can get someone better in it would be stupid not to. But there's no point sacking Page for the sake of it, or for some of the ridiculous reasons being spouted on Twitter. It should all depend on what the alternative options are - if, say, we knew Cooper was interested then I think that would be an improvement.
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Post by rushy on Mar 27, 2024 7:58:09 GMT
Hugely disappointing result, Page tactics failed again , resorting back to hoof ball to Moore simply didn't work, yet he persisted with it. We never looked like scoring because we didn't create, what a difference to the Finland game. Our passing was woeful , that is something under Page that has never been addressed.
PLayers gave their all and deserved better, and this group have a chance to keep moving forward but not with Page.
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Post by greenscorpio1967 on Mar 27, 2024 7:59:32 GMT
The team improved towards the end of the campaign,notably the emergence of JJ.The play time of more of the first teamers at a decent level and the form of the Leeds players ect.Though I'm old enough to remember when only 8 teams qualified for the finals.The easier route for qualifying these days and more teams in finals.Rather than been close to qualifying, it "hides" the fact we only got 1 point against Armernia home and away.
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Post by highbury06 on Mar 27, 2024 8:10:13 GMT
Do we think the likes of Hennessey and Ramsey may now call it a day given their ages and another tournament is two years away. I think so. And mighty fine careers for Cymru. Ramsey’s injury at Stoke ultimately cost him 100 caps. Rambo do not have the fitness to play competitive football anymore since joining juventus, possibly caused by shawcross's tackles earlier in his career. What if he didn't suffer that injury... And Wayne hasn't played a competitive club match since after the kungfu kick. Seems like he is merely staying in the national team as a training partner of Ward and in case Ward gets injured. hopefully a young goalkeeper who starts in the premier league or championship level will appear. can't imagine the team stick to ward until 2028, which would mean another 4 year of bench warming life of ward |
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Post by talyfan on Mar 27, 2024 8:55:54 GMT
Would've swapped Dan James for Moore to give us some energy up top and kept Brennan on if Brooks hadn't been training.
Weird time to experiment with James at RWB. He can do a job there but his speed, pressing and ability to get us up the pitch is very useful when he plays in attacking position.
We had Jay Da Silva and Morgan Fox on the bench? Couldn't we shifted Nico to the right and played them there? Or even put Ampadu there and bring on one of our centre mids?
Yes they've not played before much for Wales but you've got to go with the mindset that any player called up is quality enough to play for Wales which I think they are
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Post by ddirpytnop on Mar 27, 2024 9:22:55 GMT
Would've swapped Dan James for Moore to give us some energy up top and kept Brennan on if Brooks hadn't been training. Weird time to experiment with James at RWB. He can do a job there but his speed, pressing and ability to get us up the pitch is very useful when he plays in attacking position. We had Jay Da Silva and Morgan Fox on the bench? Couldn't we shifted Nico to the right and played them there? Or even put Ampadu there and bring on one of our centre mids? Yes they've not played before much for Wales but you've got to go with the mindset that any player called up is quality enough to play for Wales which I think they are Whilst bringing on an uncapped player like Da Silva might have seemed a gamble, choosing to deprive ourselves of Dan's pace and energy up front created a much bigger problem to my mind. We lacked an outball for much of the closing stages of the game. |
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Post by 1gwaunview on Mar 27, 2024 9:26:28 GMT
No shame in losing on pens even if it is the worst way to go out.
We should have won in the 90 mins, I thought Poland improved in extra-time, better use of subs (stronger bench perhaps).
Disappointed, but the younger generation of Cymru fans now have an insight of what us oldies had to contend with for decades.
I'm sure we'll qualify for one of the next two tournaments, as the majority of our players are at the right age, will only improve and be stronger for this disappointment.
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Post by ddirpytnop on Mar 27, 2024 9:30:06 GMT
I can't bring myself to watch the game back but for those who have, did Kieffer have a decent shout for a penalty for that apparent push in the box? And Mepham's second yellow - didn't look a foul even from where I was standing - but looks can be deceptive! Didn't matter in the context of the game of course but he'll now be unavailable for our opening Nation's League match.
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Post by gimli on Mar 27, 2024 9:33:45 GMT
Why did Page have Ramsey in the squad if he wasn't even going to bring him on for extra time and penalties? Didn't look like he even warmed up so clearly Page never had any intention of playing him.
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Post by winsumluzsum on Mar 27, 2024 9:47:22 GMT
I haven't looked at the forum since before the game - don't think I have the stomach for it. Twitter is 99% Page Out with a lot of nonsense being spouted. My thoughts on the game were: - I wasn't feeling confident before the game as I felt they had the better squad of players and people were reading too much into their recent results. That said, I think we played quite well with the two teams evening each other out. To prevent them from having any decent chance in 120mins was really good. I felt they did look the slightly better side in general play, but there wasn't much at all in it. - Given the above, I felt we looked pretty well-coached and had a decent gameplan, so Page and his backroom staff overall did a decent job imo which is why I feel really frustrated with a lot of the Twitter stuff. I just think there's a sense of entitlement creeping in and a lot of the reaction looks really spoilt. Seeing people commenting that 'we should have qualified automatically' even though we were up against two other very good (probably better on paper) sides, 'the game was there for the taking against a poor Polish side' even though they have a better set of players and are incredibly streetwise, and others saying Page has 'wasted the most talented squad we've ever had' - which is an absolute nonsense imo. Frankly, I think a lot of people are deluded and just don't know what they're talking about. - That said, I felt Page did get a lot of calls wrong yesterday and there are many valid criticism that can be made. Squad selection to start with - why pick Rambo (ahead of Colwill, who I felt could have come on if Ramsey wasn't up to it) if he's not fit enough to come on. I was calling for him to come on for Wilson, who looked absolutely shattered, at the end of the 90 and I would have been more than happy to see Colwill come on if he were in the squad. On substitutions, I felt Page got them all wrong. I felt Johnson had been our best player, while Moore was another one that looked completely gone by the end of the match. So James instead of Moore looked a better move. Even still, Moore just had nothing left in the tank so we should have seen him replaced by Broadhead early in extra time imo. The whole Brooks situation is just odd - apparently he hadn't trained for days due to illness - which raises the question why he came on in the first place. Then there was the Dan James at wing back experiment - and what a time to try it! It's only the second time we've done it - it didn't work at all the first time in Armenia, and it didn't help us at all last night either, completely negating his attacking influence. I assumed we were moving to a back 4 when Brooks came on for Roberts, and that's what I think should have happened. So now that the campaign's over and we've failed to qualify, I think it's entirely reasonable to consider whether we should go in a different direction. I think Page has done a good job overall, but if we can get someone better in it would be stupid not to. But there's no point sacking Page for the sake of it, or for some of the ridiculous reasons being spouted on Twitter. It should all depend on what the alternative options are - if, say, we knew Cooper was interested then I think that would be an improvement. I agree pretty much 100% with that, especially playing James at RWB. I was misled by OTJs comment that Neco would switch to RB and Davies at left back, with 2 centre backs, when Brooks came on for Roberts. A 4-2-3-1 would have had round pegs in round holes, with pretty much all of our players playing in that, or similar systems, for their clubs. It would also have enabled us to take the game to Poland, but instead the exact opposite happened. I agree in Page. He should stay unless an obviously superior alternative is available, which I doubt. Osian perhaps, but I don't see Cooper being interested. My fear is that Mooney will want to install a high profile ex-player with no managerial experience in the Giggs/Henry mould. I would prefer us to stay with Page. Page overall has done a good job, better than I expected. Our tactics and lineups at kick off have usually been good, sometimes excellent, sometimes bad. He also clearly has the backing of the squad, whichis an importantconsideration. His big Achilles heel is his in game adjustments to personnel and tactics. Excluding Croatia away (where we got lucky and got the draw in spite rather than because of his changes), I can't think of a single game where his mid-game changes have resulted in us rescuing a point or going on to win the game. This is the biggest factor weighing against the continuation of his tenure. |
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Post by ddirpytnop on Mar 27, 2024 9:50:48 GMT
Why did Page have Ramsey in the squad if he wasn't even going to bring him on for extra time and penalties? Didn't look like he even warmed up so clearly Page never had any intention of playing him. He's the official captain. Not sure that having him involved is any sort of error given the number of players sitting on the bench who have no hope of getting on the pitch in any event. What leaves me scratching my head is why, when a wingback gets injured, we didn't bring on a specialist wingback to replace him. What's the point of having like-for-like replacenents if you choose not to use them. |
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Post by greenscorpio1967 on Mar 27, 2024 9:50:57 GMT
I can't bring myself to watch the game back but for those who have, did Kieffer have a decent shout for a penalty for that apparent push in the box? And Mepham's second yellow - didn't look a foul even from where I was standing - but looks can be deceptive! Didn't matter in the context of the game of course but he'll now be unavailable for our opening Nation's League match. |
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