https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/55402948
Should this have been arranged?
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https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/55402948
Should this have been arranged?
100 Caps and the Captaincy for Gunter hopefully.
surely engineering it so that Gunter gets to 100 caps completely devalues the achievement of getting 100 caps.
he doesn't deserve to get in in front of Roberts or Williams, we'd just be giving him 100 caps for the sake of it.
why didn't we arrange some friendlies to get Southall to 100 caps?
I don't think the friendly is being arranged for Gunter's benefit.
He came on in the 93rd minute for his 99th cap. I don't think anybody would begrudge him that would they?
I seem to remember someone on here saying something along the lines of "whats the point of bringing Gunter on in the 89th minute, I'd tell the manager to go and do one"...
Made me laugh that.
He won't give a monkeys how he gets to 100 caps.
It is absurd. Three games in six days in an already overcrowded season.
Bobby Moore and 100 kids.
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We aren't arranging these friendlies though - we have to play them due to international calendar. Back when we did arrange friendlies we deliberately arranged as few as possible to assist us rising up the rankings table, a "hack" that no longer can be used, so you could argue that Gunter missed out on games that he should have had chance to play in.
Would we be giving Gunter game time if he was on 80 caps and unlikely to ever reach 100? To answer that look at context of his most recent games. He played against England as one of most experienced players in game where we needed to save players for more important games but not go through embarrassing loss, he played against USA in similar role, he came on briefly in a game where Finland had come back into it after Bale (otherwise our most experienced player) had gone off and we needed experience to ride things out. The odds of Gunter playing exact same role if he was on 80 caps is high.
The excitement is slightly artificial - fans don't want to see any other experienced players coming on for 5-10 minutes to see out contest, they want the next big thing and rock 'n' roll football - but the achievement will be real.
We get to have a friendly but Belgium don't, think I'm right in saying that, and any team in a full sized group don't. Ideally we'd be Belgium's third game and hopefully catch them fatigued but there definitely are others who have it worse.
I agree though, three game in six days is not right.
In fairness to Gunter, he's been a stalwart for Wales and if he's on 99 caps then providing he's fit and can do a job, expect him to cross the 100 mark in the next batch of spring games. Does seem a bit strange considering the names we've had over the years that the first player to achieve 100 caps is a championship right back but Hennessey (94) and Bale (87) aren't far behind and those two aren't going anytime soon so they will probably overtake his record.
Mexico friendly will be just that, a friendly. It'll be a match to try different things with the youngsters and fringe players, its a big pool of players these days with Wales so i'm not abject to it.