Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
BOSS PAGE: WE DIDN’T DESERVE ANYTHING
Wales hopes hang by a thread after Doha horror show but James insists the Dragons never underestimated crisis-torn Iran
years. Page (above) said: “They deserved the win. Before I made the changes, they hit the post, the bar, they had a goal disallowed in the first half.
“I’m not going to sit here and say we deserved anything out of that game. We weren’t in the game at all. We can carry one or two players if they have an off day, but when the whole team aren’t at it, there’s only going to be one outcome.
“We fell well below the standards we’ve set in recent months and when you do that in top competitions, you get punished. We’ve got to get on with it. We can’t sit around crying about it.
“We have an opportunity to put it right. We want to give our supporters something to cheer about.
“They have shown massive commitment to come over here and it’s really disappointing to have given them that performance.”
Wales skipper Gareth Bale said: “We’re gutted, there’s no other way to say it. We fought until the last second and we need to go again.
“We are all gutted but we have to pick ourselves up straight away. It’s going to be difficult for us for sure. We’ll have to see. What can I say? We recover and we have to go again.”
Hennessey was initially shown a yellow card for his reckless challenge, but that was upgraded to a red after a VAR review.
Substitute keeper Danny Ward came on but conceded twice, to leave Wales on the brink of going out.
Jubilant Iran coach Carlos Queiroz said: “This is just the beginning, but we need to finish the job.
“It was a wonderful day for us. I don’t have words to say thank you to the players. They were brilliant.”
DANIEL JAMES insisted Wales did not underestimate Iran after a dire defeat which leaves their World Cup hopes hanging by a thread.
Wales’ fate in Group B is now out of their hands after they crashed 2-0 to Iran at the Ahmed Ali Stadium in Doha.
Rob Page’s men were favourites to beat Carlos Queiroz’s side who were thumped 6-2 by England in their opener.
But they were second-best for the entire match as Iran had a goal ruled out by VAR and hit the woodwork twice.
Iran eventually won in dramatic fashion in stoppage time with goals from Rouzbeh Cheshmi and Ramin Rezaeian after Wales keeper Wayne Hennessey was shown a straight red card in the 86th minute.
Winger James said: “Coming into the game we knew Iran are a threat. We knew they’d be a good team. The red card obviously changed the game. The ball comes out to the edge of the box and it’s an incredible finish for their first goal.
“We then pushed for that equaliser and the second goal has come from us pushing everyone up the field and them on the counter-attack. Before the red card I thought it was an even game and
we could have pushed for the win. It was even before the red card. Iran obviously got beat in the last game but they changed things up against us.”
Roared on by the fervent and largely Iranian crowd, Queiroz’s side were extremely unlucky not to score early in the second half as Sardar Azmoun and Ali Gholizadeh struck the post within the space of a few seconds.
But the Iranians triumphed as Wales star duo of Gareth Bale and Aaron Ramsey were well under par.
The display was even worse than Wales’ lacklustre first-half showing against USA in Monday’s opener, when they salvaged a draw. But James insists
Page’s men should have no trouble lifting themselves for their must-win final game against neighbours England on Tuesday, even though their odds of qualifying look extremely faint.
James, on loan at Fulham from Leeds, added: “We’re here, we’ve got one game left and we can’t go into that thinking we’ve already lost. We can pick ourselves up.
“It’s going to be a tough one for the boys to take but we’ll dust ourselves off and get ready for that one. First we’ve got to analyse this game, look at what we could’ve done better and try and take the positives out of it. Then we’ve got to go into that game with no fear.”