The official *Wales journey to Rio 2014*-we can all dream...

Thread for the few Welsh football fans I've come across on the board. Obviously there is an England one so why not for Wales eh?

Tough group and although we haven't got a Germany in our group, there are so many tough, well matched sides in the group that it will take something special to qualify. Its a shame because under Speed, we were genuine contenders in this group, the football e were playing would have been troublesome for every team in the group.

Serbia, Belgium, Scotland, Croatia and even Macedonia are going to be very tough games, especially the Belgium's who we open against. That first game is pivotal to how we are going to go in the group. We cannot afford to lose our first home game, we need to make the CCS a fortress and make it difficult for any team who visits there.

If we can take a point from our opening game, we aren't playing catch up already and can then build on the confidence from that particular result,. Wales are a confidence team, bit like the rugby side. We saw under Speed, the way we played football and the results we got was due to confidence being so high and the frededom to express ourselves. It needs to be similar under Coleman, and hopefully tonight we can get off to a good start.

Team I'd play vs Belgium:

4-2-3-1

Myhill

Mathews Williams Collins Gunter

Allen Edwards

Robson-Kanu Ramsey Bale

Morrison

Good luck against Belgium tonight

Duty281 wrote:Good luck against Belgium tonight

Thanks Duty, same to England tomorrow, should be 3 points

Looks like were down and out already. We were soundly beaten at home by Belgium.

Still at least Bale turned up for a change, that doesn't happen very often!

A shame for Wales, i was interested to see the game for when they play us in the coming months. It was hard to tell with Wales, started ok, Bale is magnificent, the rest pale in comparison, a point in Serbia would be a good recovery with all those injuries. Belgium are very good but don't really have a goalscorer, some lovely play without much end product, hopefully we can take advantage of that.

Well allot of positives to take out that result tonight, even though it wasn't the result we were hoping for. Couple of thoughts:

-Certainly a yellow but not a red card imo. He didn't go in 2 footed and the Belgium player never had control of the ball either, complete 50/50 and both went in similar ways.
-Never a free kick for the second goal, never seen a free kick given when not even a challenge has been committed, sealed our fate
-Superb heart shown by the players to continue to press and be disciplined against the Belgians. Shows we can defend against the very best.
-Bale and Ramsey were superb and with Bellamy, Allen, Ledley and Vaughan to return, we have players coming back who can make a difference.

Very pleased with boys tonight, not the ref but in the end Belgium were well worth the win, red card had a big bearing on the result however.

The referee was a waste of space. He cost Wales the game with a dreadful decision on Collins in the first half, no way was it a red. He also failed to send off a Belgian player for a clear professional foul.

I heard Coleman blamed the referee too. I couldn't access his exact reaction because the incompetent BBC's link to the story is broken (no way would that be the case if it involved Englan!) but I think the performance from the referee is worthy of an official complaint to FIFA. He should never be allowed to referee another International ever again or at the very least be subject to disciplinary proceedings. He was a complete jerk and Wales must make sure they never have him referee a match involving them again.

He was a disgrace and unfortunately gave us next to no chance of getting anything out of the game. Collins was our best defender as well leading up to that point, his areal presence was keeping kompany and co and bay.

Shame but onwards and upwards vs serbia. We should go there full of confidence after that showing, and hopefully with allen, bellamy, ledley and collins available for selection.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/19526947

It's not broken.

Such a shame we can't rediscover the form we had under Speed, and also a shame we can't ever get a settled squad without a raft of injuries and withdrawals.

Not looking good now 3-1 down

Watching England, but wondering for anybody watching this game is it maybe Allen being brought back to early?

I ain't watching it (ain't got sky) but it sounds like it's just very poor defending (which is usually our achilles heel)

Lookin like the wooden spoon for Wales even at this early stage.

4-1 although you've got to remember this is an severely understrength Wales side

Yeah but a rubbish Scotland side were disappointed with a draw...

Ent wrote:Yeah but a rubbish Scotland side were disappointed with a draw...

Sad to think that we beat Scotland 4-0 not too long ago...

5-1 is absolutely appalling! We need to get our defence sorted! It'd help when we have Hennessey back, and shame we've lost Taylor, but we really need to get some communication going - we played much better than this against Belgium, and we had 10 men and loads of dodgy decisions against us! ARRGH!

Yeah it's a pity, you see how well e.g. Ireland hae done (euros aside) without the talent Wales have and just feel something is amiss.

6-1 terrible.

But it's very difficult when most of your experienced players retire, and you have a host of withdrawals every time a squad is announced, and a host of players suffer long term injuries during their Wales careers (Ramsey, Collinson, Collins, Delaney, Gabinon, Bellamy, Taylor to name a few).

As a result the manager has to put together a patched together team almost every games, with League 1 players sometimes thrown in to fill holes, and usually little training time with these combinations or the whole team (because of last minute injuries/withdrawals).

It's very difficult - but at the same time nothing excuses that dire performance (glad I didn't watch it).

Granted but e.g. N Ireland have to draw from league 1 and some part time sides manage to give good accounts of themselves.

All involved need to look at themselves, pro player should be able to turn out a decent effort and any coach worth his salt should be able to sort some organisation in a week.

Ent wrote:Granted but e.g. N Ireland have to draw from league 1 and some part time sides manage to give good accounts of themselves.

All involved need to look at themselves, pro player should be able to turn out a decent effort and any coach worth his salt should be able to sort some organisation in a week.

Yes but I don't think they have half a squad withdraw almost as soon as being called up. And if it was easy enough for any coach to get the players to put out a decent effort - then why do international coaches demand that players get together for so long before games - they may as well call up players who haven't played/trained together before a week before games, and they should be fine...

Smirnoffpriest wrote:

Ent wrote:Granted but e.g. N Ireland have to draw from league 1 and some part time sides manage to give good accounts of themselves.

All involved need to look at themselves, pro player should be able to turn out a decent effort and any coach worth his salt should be able to sort some organisation in a week.

Yes but I don't think they have half a squad withdraw almost as soon as being called up. And if it was easy enough for any coach to get the players to put out a decent effort - then why do international coaches demand that players get together for so long before games - they may as well call up players who haven't played/trained together before a week before games, and they should be fine...

There's no having enough time together and there's getting hammered 6-1 by a side who another poor nation were disappointed to draw 0-0 with.

Smirnoffpriest wrote:

Ent wrote:Yeah but a rubbish Scotland side were disappointed with a draw...

Sad to think that we beat Scotland 4-0 not too long ago...

5-1 is absolutely appalling! We need to get our defence sorted! It'd help when we have Hennessey back, and shame we've lost Taylor, but we really need to get some communication going - we played much better than this against Belgium, and we had 10 men and loads of dodgy decisions against us! ARRGH!

In a friendly against Berti Vogts Scotland side we got hammered by everyone, wouldn't surprise me if you guys beat us 4-0, we are embarassing.