Craig Bellamy speaks about criticism over the summer

Craig Bellamy:


"The summer wasn't easy, then these games weren't easy.

"But I've seen it; I've drawn on experience because I've seen managers before me get it.

"I've been part of that, and I've seen the abuse. I've seen the abuse the previous manager got just before me, and I have to be honest, it's been a really difficult couple of months.

"It's not me but I have kids and a wife; it's for them - they see it.

"I've lived in this environment and I had it as a player, but I think there's ways we can speak to people, and just because it's the game we love, it doesn't give us the right to think we can say whatever we want to.

"We're such a small country, I'm like... why can't we have each other's backs? Why don't we look after each other more? Maybe that's me.

"I'm not saying everyone's above criticism, far from it. But I think it's too easy, and we're too quick.

"It's like, I give everything for my country. Everything. I turned down big money to keep doing this. I love doing this."

Fair play to him.
Hasn’t deserved most of the things said against him, massively overachieving as a country and last night proved it again. Would love to have seen what he could do with the squad 10 years ago, maybe even taken wales that step further.

I really like him. He's honest and the front of house for a team out of their depth who pull performances like last night out of the hat.

I can't disagree with the gripes over the Burnley thing, but that's football. Holding that grudge is a bit sad to me.

This aged well..

There is no direction and if you don't think he has lost the dressing room you are a mile away.

So who would replace him is the question? Quite frankly any man and his dog as we are on a downward spiral and the longer Bellers stays the worse it gets.

Players like Danny Ward, Ben Davies, Cabango, Dasilva, Jordan James, Cullen, Sorba, Koumas, Sheehan, our own Joel C and Ashford, Mark Harris etc etc shouldn't be anywhere near League A standard of nations league. Some quality performances in that list of players last night!

I'd argue that Nico and Ampadu are the two that 'on paper' are to the standard.

Beat Denmark at home and we'd go 2nd.

Fair play to him.
Hasn’t deserved most of the things said against him, massively overachieving as a country and last night proved it again. Would love to have seen what he could do with the squad 10 years ago, maybe even taken wales that step further.

I think Coleman set us up perfectly for what we had at the time. Try not to concede let Bale and Ramsey do their thing. Turning Portugal over without Ramsey was a next to impossible task. Bellamy is doing great with possibly the weakest Wales squad in living memory. Peoples expectations have been way to high we aren't good enough to challenge the top teams in Europe in terms of the nations league we are a good league B team, if we get relegated so be it getting in there in the first place is an achievement

Scrapping a win against a team with 10 men doesn't change the fact we have a Welsh FA which lacks ambition with no backbone, persevering with someone who wanted to jump ship and abandon his country at the first opportunity.

I won't forget or forgive him and neither will many others.

I'm not sure what he means when he says that he turned down big money to do this job.

If he were that commited he wouldn't have even spoken to Burnley about their job.

Perhaps he means he wasn't offered enough money to leave his current job.

He's an intelligent man. He must have realised that he'd come under increased scrutiny.

It's absolutely wrong to attack him or his family on a personal basis but he absolutely deserves criticism for some (not all) of his recent team selections and in game substitutions.

Having said that, he is still a young manager learning his trade with a small squad of players of limited quality.

He's doing okay but needs to learn from his errors.

Seemed like he was trying to make a point of this in the interview last night.

Not the point he thinks it is. Been justified criticism, one win doesn’t erase past results, strange team selection, tactics and that he would’ve gone Burnley if his staff would’ve come with him.

I think it’s crazy that so many turned on him so quickly but it very much shows the fickleness of the modern day football fan.

The criticism of him having talks with Burnley are insane, every single person who criticised him would do the same and most would have backed down and gone anyway when they told him no to the backroom staff.

I think the team selection criticisms are mostly baseless apart from whatever he was thinking against Bosnia (was anyone expecting to beat Portugal or Denmark away?).

I think criticism was fair. This was the first win we've had this calendar year.

There are teams we've played who we should have beat, it's not like they've all been against nations who are way better than us. Even in those games against the better nations, my main criticism was that there was no sign of performance. I compare that to City, when we have lost games this season I have seen signs in the performances that are positive.

Any abuse of him or his family is obviously uncalled for and crosses a line. I've said the same when some "fans" have called Cardiff City players derogatory names.

But I'm not getting carried away after last night. Reality is the first half was pretty even and then Norway had a man sent off right at the start of the second half. They also missed chances. Need to back it up with a good performance on Sunday.