Planet Swans ArchivesI find it incredible that there are some Welsh players out there who are deliberately throwing their toys out of the pram and threatening international retirement if John Toshack replaces Mark Hughes as manager of our country.
I have a pretty simple solution for them if that is their attitude, retire now as the honour of representing your country clearly doesn’t mean that much to you. The basis for these threats are that nasty Mr Toshack has been criticising not just their performances but some of the tactics made by Mark Hughes in the last few years. The trust does often hurt and maybe they realise that the words of Tosh are closer to the bone than any of these overpaid professionals would like to believe.
Toshack is quite simply the most successful Welsh born manager of all time. Let’s put aside the near miracle he was working at the Vetch 25 years ago and look at what he has achieved on the continent. Two spells at Madrid, several at Sociedad amongst others and success achieved with them. One of the few managers to manage Madrid twice says it all – they don’t often give out those second chances.
Now working at the BBC as a media pundit, Toshack does not hide his feelings – he says it as he sees it and some players do not like that. Those criticised seem to prefer someone like Gary Speed or Brian Flynn to take charge because obviously they are nicer about them and can let sub standard performances pass by without any word to the negative.
Last Saturday against England we were embarrassing. We did not compete for 90 minutes and a 2-0 defeat flattered us. One attempt on target in the whole 90 minutes and less than a handful of attempts full stop. Someone compared it to a Premiership side against a League One side in the FA Cup. That’s bollocks as well – a League One side would have given a far better account of themselves than we managed.
Whoever takes over, and I hope it is Toshack, they have much work to do not least the tantrums of a few players who seem to believe that they have a right to represent their country without criticism – most of it justified.
Mark Hughes has been largely credited with turning around Welsh football but the truth is that despite this apparent ‘success’ we have won just 6 qualifying games in the 5 years that he was at the helm. Granted some of his qualifying matches were when we were at rock bottom but even still – 6 games? Scary isn’t it?
Quite frankly if some players retire because they don’t like the manager then good riddance to them. I want to see players pull on the Welsh shirt with a viewpoint that it means everything to them. Even if they have less ability at least we may see some passion while we are losing games rather than the roll over and die attitude we seem to live with from time to times.
Get Toshack in and if the criticised don’t like it then show them the Millennium Stadium exit and tell them to shut it behind them. After all it will make a good sob story in their autobiographies!
