Wales boss Rob Page backed as pressure ramps up but ‘lost’ players urged to ‘look at themselves’

Chris Mepham insists the Wales squad are wholly behind Rob Page after a terrible four days left their hopes of qualifying automatically for Euro 2024 dangling by a thread.

Wales were thumped 4-2 at home by Armenia, an embarrassing defeat, before they fell to a 2-0 defeat at the hands of Turkey. The latter could have been by a bigger margin, too, with the hosts having two goals ruled out and Danny Ward saving a penalty out in Samsun.

Wales are left licking their wounds after what has been a painful eight months or so for both the team and its supporters. Since they qualified for the World Cup with that wonderful 1-0 victory over Ukraine, Wales have played 12 games but won once, scored only 10 goals but conceded 22, and kept just one clean sheet.

READ MORE: Wales can’t carry on like this, Rob Page needs help and should bring Osian Roberts back

The two defeats in this most recent camp has seen the pressure ratchet up on manager Page, with supporters growing weary at the apparent lack of progression since the big retirements of Gareth Bale and Joe Allen, among others.

But when asked if the squad were fully behind Page, Mepham said: “100 per cent. He’s someone I really admire. He brought me into the Wales set-up in the first place and I’ll make sure I give everything I can for him.

“On the flip side it is a results business, but we’ve also played a lot of tough teams – Belgium twice and Netherlands twice is in this run – and we’re mixing it with the very best. We know we need to do better and we’re definitely looking at ways to do that. We believe we can turn it around.”

After the Turkey defeat, Page said his players must now treat every game as a must win, which they virtually are if they harbour any hopes of achieving automatic qualification for next year’s Euros. They can, however, still qualify through the play-offs, which you can read about here.

The Wales boss refused to have a defeatist attitude, though, that much can be said. And the same can be said for Bournemouth defender Mepham, who insisted hopes of qualification were not all lost.

“We can’t have that mindset,” he said. “I think it’s a free hit for us now. We’re five points behind Turkey and the onus on us now is to win games. In a weird way the pressure is off a little bit. There is that gap now. We’ve got to make sure in the next camp that we go full guns blazing and get a result against Latvia to close that gap.”

Many supporters are less optimistic, though. Pundits, too.

“One win in 12 is not a great stat – it doesn’t look great for Rob, it doesn’t look great for Wales as a whole,” said Wales Women international and Leicester forward Hannah Cain on the BBC. “Hopefully they can turn it around, but we will have to see in the future what happens.”

Danny Gabbidon, however, a former team-mate of Page’s, of course, has backed the current boss to keep the reins until the end of the qualifying campaign next year.

“[Whether to stick or twist] is going to be the question that’s going to be asked over the next few days,” Gabbidon said. “The FAW have backed him and given him a four-year contract. He led us to the World Cup, which was fantastic. For me, personally, he probably deserves to see out the rest of the campaign. But obviously we are looking at a bit of a sticky situation.

“I think the players have to look at themselves a bit as well. Maybe take on a little bit more responsibility. It’s going to be a difficult ask for us to qualify. We will probably have to win all of our games – and the pressure is mounting.

“We have been spoilt in the last few years, the success we’ve had, and we look a little bit lost. We lack a bit of identity and that’s for Robert Page the manager to sort out, but it needs to be sorted out really quickly.”