Originally Posted by
Eric the Half a Bee
I'm surprised you believe any of that.
Hughes should have left after we lost to Russia. His handling of the side after we won our first 4 games in the group was poor. After we beat Italy we failed to win any of our last 11 competitive internationals with Hughes in charge. The fall from grace was dramatic. Hughes's old guard needed changing. To blame our fall down the rankings on Toshack is hardly a fair one - the slide had begun before he was appointed. It was no surprise that we ended up where we were. We had a dearth of talent.
Youngsters were picked as older players, who had been responsible for the slide, fell out with Toshack out of support for Hughes. I remember a phone in on Real Radio where Robbie Savage was roasted for saying he'd do anything to get back into the Welsh squad but actually did very little. No loss to Wales, really. Flynn had an excellent track record of working with youngsters. Between him and Tosh they went further with the grandparent eligibility route and got players their Welsh caps early.
I would argue that playing players at a young age benefitted them when it came to playing for Wales. It continues to work to our advantage, so to rubbish it is a little incongruous.
The Toshack years were a dark time of rebuilding. The team he inherited wasn't good enough. I don't believe anyone would have done much with them. I would argue that it wasn't really until Bale and Ramsey came to the fore in the early 2010s that we started to look capable again and the last decade has been incredible. The building for that didn't start with Gary Speed.