The inquest into Wales’s humbling by Armenia began in earnest on Saturday morning, a few hours before an afternoon flight to Samsun, the Turkish city on the Black Sea where suddenly it all feels rather make or break when it comes to qualifying for Euro 2024.
The grave mood in the stands at full time in Cardiff, as the remnants of a sold-out crowd wondered whether they had inadvertently been teleported back to the bruising days when Wales were nestled below Guatemala and Guyana in the Fifa rankings, married with what is now a bleak forecast.
In recent years Wales have never had it so good, but Friday provided an unwanted and brutal throwback to more testing times. The nation has simply, owing to the team’s unprecedented recent success, come to expect much better.
The last time Wales conceded more than three goals in a competitive home game a 17-year-old left-back by the name of Gareth Bale scored his first of 41 goals for his country, a stunning free-kick in a 5-1 defeat by Slovakia.
In isolation, being picked off 4-2 at home to Armenia is unquestionably one of the worst results this millennium for Wales but burrow a little deeper and the cold reality is that it had been coming. Since qualifying for the World Cup 12 months ago, via a deflected Bale free-kick, they have won one of their 11 matches.
A blinding result in Split in March, when Nathan Broadhead salvaged a 1-1 draw with Croatia on debut with Wales’s only shot on target, in the third minute of second-half stoppage time, masked a poor performance. Wales edged past Latvia a few days later and at that point all appeared dandy.
Perhaps that was what Rob Page, the Wales manager, was getting at when he said everybody was getting starry-eyed as he tried to explain the humiliating defeat. Page insists Wales did not underestimate their opponents and before the game Aaron Ramsey, the Wales captain, alluded to the goal Armenia scored in defeat to Turkey in March as evidence of how they can hurt teams.
As Wales discovered to their detriment. Ramsey spoke of a streetwise side who would likely sit in a low block and prove awkward opponents but Armenia were not plucky winners. They were strong and sharp, incisively carving Wales open time and again, and scored four fine goals.
The thing is, should anyone really have been surprised? A quick sift through Wales’s team is a revealing exercise. Of the starting lineup only Ben Davies and Harry Wilson finished the season as first-choice starters in the Premier League. The goalkeeper Danny Ward lost his place at relegated Leicester and the centre-backs Chris Mepham and Joe Rodon spent much of last season playing second fiddle at Bournemouth and Rennes, respectively.
Ethan Ampadu, fresh from suffering the third relegation of his career, as Spezia tumbled into Serie B last Sunday, was fighting a losing battle at the base of midfield alongside Ramsey, who was easily bypassed. Daniel James will be in the Championship with Leeds next year. And let’s not forget this is Page’s first senior manager role since being sacked by Northampton.
Of course, if Wales beat Turkey on Monday, the picture will not look anywhere near as bleak. Page knows Wales need a win to repair the damage. “If we win, we go back into a position of power,” said the winger David Brooks, who was given a standing ovation as he came on against Armenia for his first Wales appearance in two years after treatment for Hodgkin lymphoma.
“I think people will be starting to doubt us, but we have got to go and try and put in a performance to prove all those people wrong. We all want to get to a major tournament, so nothing has changed.”
Page maintained afterwards that this is a team in transition in the post-Bale era. That much is true. Brennan Johnson, who laid on James’s opener, is surely Wales’s most exciting talent, while the 18-year-olds Luke Harris and Jordan James, of Fulham and Birmingham, respectively, will likely be integrated in the coming months.
It is too easy to point to the absence of Bale as a factor in Wales’s return to type, not least because by the end he was in effect a mannequin. Nevertheless, Bale unmistakably carried Wales at times and came to the fore when his country needed him most. Was the harrowing Armenia episode a one-off or is this what Wales are now? Time will tell.
