The weekend that Craig Bellamy, and every Welsh football fan, crosses fingers, toes and finds as much lucky heather as possible.
Something For The Weekend is your new Friday round up of this week’s news. It’ll be multi-media with audio, and in future video included. Scroll down to hear from Craig.
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This week I got the chance to sit down with Craig ahead of the Nations League finale. We certainly like to keep things interesting in this competition and once again the final two games provide us with a myriad of scenarios.
We’ll get into those next week but in the next fortnight we could end up with relegation, relegation play-off, second place and a quarter-final tie and find out if we’ll a top seed for Euro qualifying for the first time in our history.
First up, Something For The Weekend, takes you to Elland Road where the squad are boosted by the return of the influential Harry Wilson and Joe Rodon.
Wilson’s been back fit for a few weeks but had to bide his time in terms of starting before finally getting the nod against Bournemouth. Playing alongside Dan James they both impressed in the first half only for Leeds to drop a bit of a clanger which changed the game.
It was a third start in the Premier League for Harry after his summer move from Fulham. But, while Bellamy admitted that he can understand a bit of frustration in terms of game time he felt it was too early in the season for it to be an issue. Have listen to Craig below:
Staying at Leeds, Joe Rodon was nice surprise inclusion.
He’s become a real cult hero at Elland Road and a big player for Daniel Farke. We all know about his qualities in the red shirt of Cymru but his defensive performances for Leeds and that he’d started to chip in with some goals in pre-season things were looking good. Only for a dreaded hamstring injury at the end of August to put paid to a few weeks of action. But, Joe returned to full training this week and has apparently been texting Bellamy to tell him he’s good to go. That was confirmed on Thursday by Daniel Farke who said that if he passed his fitness tests he’d be prepared to potentially use him against Tottenham due to his experience and dressing room influence.
Welcome back Big Joe!
Which brings us on to Koumas. I asked Bellamy in the news conference about advice that he might have for the youngster given that his game time will be a little more limited at Liverpool with the return to fitness of Isak. From a personal point of view I can imagine after the highs and the taste of being the main man to dropping back might be tough. But, it’s these little things that make or break a footballer. Can you deal with that rollercoaster, can it inspire rather than consume you.
I love Bellamy’s answer to my question. Passionate, concise and I can just imagine that Koumas is Bellamy’s almost perfect forward:
The big takeaway there is his admiration in how Liverpool are handling Lewis’ development. You can tell that Bellamy has insight and close monitoring of the situation. In fact, although I understand some fans frustrations with Craig, I think the way he handles the players and I’d say cares for the players is something, I believe, he does really well.
You quite often get a sliding doors moments in many footballers careers. This summer with Iraola coming in, a late World Cup, injuries to the main guys all of a sudden a space opened up for Koumas. It came off the back of two moral boosting performances for Cymru. Then the kid that was struggling for game time at Birmingham and Hull on loan had an opportunity. It’s then about taking that chance, and boy oh boy he has absolutely done that.
So far we’ve not seen Wilson really playing with this new look Koumas. There’s another reason to be excited.
But, hey, let’s just get through these next couple of days with no injuries shall we. I’m going back to crossing my fingers. I hope you enjoyed the first Something For The Weekend. Subscribe and we’ll have plenty more coming your way.