Allen so confident that Dragons won’t fail without main man Bale

JOE ALLEN insists Wales can resurrect their faltering World Cup campaign even WITHOUT Gareth Bale.

The Welsh are on seven points at the half-way stage – four points behind leaders Serbia and Ireland.

But Real Madrid superstar Bale is suspended for the trip to Belgrade after he was booked for a foul on Ireland’s John O’Shea in Friday’s 0-0 draw.

Wales’ key man has scored 14 of their last 29 competitive goals.

But Allen said: “No teams have really scared us in this group. We can take confidence from that.

“And the way things panned out for us at the end of Friday’s game – when we had to play with 10 men for the last 20 minutes – we may look back on that as a point gained.

“Losing Gareth, indeed any player, is always disappointing but we had that issue in our last campaign too.

“This group of lads know how to deal with things like that and we will look forward to hopefully getting three points in Belgrade.

“I’m not going to try and deflect from the fact we are going to miss Gareth.

“Serbia will obviously be glad that he’s not going to be playing but we’ll certainly feel we have enough quality in the rest of the squad to go to there and overcome them.”

Although still unbeaten in this campaign, Wales have dropped points in four games – and to top the group they probably need to take 13 points from their remaining five fixtures – away to Serbia, Georgia and Moldova and home to Austria and Ireland.

Allen said: “We can take three points off everyone and that means we still have fate in our own hands. We’re a hard team to beat, we’re not going to make it easy for anyone and this group of players has shown it is capable of doing special things. “We hope that we can do it again.” BALE OUT: Wales ace sees yellow in the 67th minute GARRY DOYLE