ForWales? Bale’s injuries... Toshack gives his verdict
was, Bale back to his best, only he could do it. But once again I felt it was completely unnatural.
OK, people say Gareth is special because he does the very things that others don’t. Fair enough, but when I see that still going on it makes me wonder.
That cup game was Gareth’s first appearance in two months. Coincidence or not, he’s been out again since. And I read in the Madrid newspapers a specialist explaining how he doesn’t have a ‘normal football injury’, but needs to build up this muscle, or that one.
The fact is he is missing an awful lot of matches and I think the point is arriving where we’ll have to see Gareth adapting his game.
The days of 50-yard runs followed by a Roy of the Rovers wonder goal have probably gone, I’m afraid. Gareth is at the stage where it’ll be more about pass and move. Or whereas he might have gone on five surging runs per match, these days it’ll be down to one.
This is not a criticism of Gareth. I repeat, he’s in my dream XI and through thick and thin I’ve stuck up for him out in Spain when the media have given him unfair stick.
But I see images of him training with a harness on his back to strengthen muscles. That’s OK when you’re young, but at 28?
I’d prefer Gareth to relax a bit, go out for a couple of pints with his mates, let his hair down and just come back and train and play normally.
He can also revert to left-back if he wishes, where he started his career. Oh, he has to play further forward, people say.
Yet I never saw Roberto Carlos or Paolo Maldini play up front. Just because you’re a left-back, it doesn’t mean you can’t still be a world-class player and hugely influential on the team.
Bill Shankly used to say the perfect team is made up of eight piano carriers and three to play it. Sigurdsson and Llorente were amongst the three piano players and they have not been replaced.
To use another old Liverpool comparison, I look through the Swansea team at the moment and wonder who is the Tommy Smith-type character. Someone to grab things by the scruff of the neck, get everyone going.
I know times have changed, but when we won promotion at Preston those many years ago we had seven Welshmen in the team. Likewise when we beat Leeds 5-1.
These were local players who identified with the club, knew exactly what it meant to pull on that white shirt. Some may not have been the greatest footballers in the world, but the fans loved them. You could never doubt their spirit, even if we were losing a game.
I do raise my eyebrows at some of the sums of money spent these days.
When we went up to the old Third Division, my chairman Malcolm Struel told me ‘You’ve got £50,000 to spend on new players.’
I spent £40k of it, half of that on Geoff Crudgington who was a goalkeeper. I gave £10k back to Malcolm and said ‘Look after it, we may need it again in January’.
Maybe that’s the old romantic in me coming out, but it does put into perspective the sums Swansea have been splashing out recently.
£50,000? You can earn that as a player from Monday to Wednesday today!
TO be honest it saddens me to see the lack of Welsh players in their side too. Then again, old timers will probably say I was one of the only ones back in 1969, so not too much has changed!
Neil Warnock certainly knows his way around the Championship. Cardiff have points in the bag and have set off at a real pace.
There is always a team or two who come through from the pack in the new year, so others will be eyeing Cardiff and feel they can be caught.
But I’m not sure that will happen. While I don’t want to be accused of putting the Indian sign on them, you have to think it’s looking really bright for Cardiff and that the Premier League beckons again for them.
It would be fantastic to see them back in there and I just hope Swansea keep their top-flight status, too.
IT’S an honour to be at the dinner in London tonight. When I reflect upon what I’ve achieved down the years, starting at Swansea as player-manager, I have to pinch myself sometimes.
More than 1,000 games? It’s a lot easier to say than it is to actually do.
If you consider I spent six years with Wales, where we had about six matches a year, that’s around another 250 games I could have had by remaining in club football.
I feel very privileged, but you wonder how many British managers will be given the oppotunity to reach that landmark figure in the future.
Take a look down the Premier League and eight of the top nine clubs have foreign managers. The exception is Sean Dyche with Burnley.
These things go in trends and the truth is at the moment we’re not overly-rated within European football.
I got my break in Spain during the 1980s because a season earlier Terry Venables had won the league with Barcelona. So Real Sociedad, then Real Madrid, thought a British manager was the way.
Soon we had Ron Atkinson at Atletico Madrid, Jock Wallace at Sevilla, Colin Addison at Celta Vigo, Howard Kendall at Athletic Bilbao, plus myself and Terry.
Six of us in Spain and not a single foreign manager in England’s top flight.
Today there are 11 foreign managers in the Premier League and not a single Briton in La Liga.
Those are startling stats, really.
THIS one might surprise a few people, particularly as I’ve won trophies abroad including the La Liga title with a record number of goals at Real Madrid.
But if I had to choose one match over 40 years that gave me the most satisfaction, I’d plump for Azerbaijan v Wales in a World Cup qualifier back in 2009.
Why? Because we were so beset by injuries we only had 14 players when we met up at Reading to prepare, didn’t even have enough bodies to cover the bench properly.
It was June, baking hot out in Baku, this was a young Welsh team almost being thrown to the wolves.
Aaron Ramsey had a temperature and was coughing and spitting up in the dressing room afterwards.
Yet we hung in there and won the game 1-0, David Edwards scoring.
Some of these young players grew up that day – Hennessey, Gunter, Ashley Williams, Ledley, Ramsey, Edwards, Vokes.
Joe Allen was on the bench, having barely featured for Swansea up to that point.
They stood together in extremely trying circumstances and came through with victory.
When you analyse my management career, it may appear daft that I single out that game above any other.
But because of the circumstances, that Wales victory does stand out. Still brings a tingle down the spine even when I think of it today.