Stephen (@StephenJBaker) takes a little historical look at games between Cymru and this window’s opponents.

Yes, Bellas Ball returns this weekend with a Friday night game away in Iceland, followed Tuesday night against Montenegro in Cardiff.  The Bellamy Era got off to a good start in September with a 0-0 draw against Türkiye at home. Then an excellent 2-1 win in what looked like a swimming pool in Montenegro. Fingers crossed for more of the same this weekend.

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We will take a look at a few facts and figures about our two opponents.

With Iceland first, they are the 71st ranked team in world (Cymru 29th). Last month they lost to Türkiye away 3-1 and beat Montenegro at home 2-0. Maybe not the start to the Nations League they would have wanted, but they are capable of beating higher ranked teams. This past June they beat England 1-0 when their left winger Thorsteinsson, who also scored against Montenegro, got the winner. Just like Cymru, they have spread the goals around with Pálsson and Oskarsson scoring the other Nations League goals.

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We have an excellent record against Iceland, 5 wins, 1 draw, 1 defeat.

02 Jun 80 Iceland v Cymru 0-4 World Cup qualifying (W)

14 Oct 81 Cymru v Iceland 2-2 World Cup qualifying  (D)

12 Sep 84 Iceland v Cymru 1-0 World Cup qualifying  (L)

14 Nov 84 Cymru v Iceland 2-1 World Cup qualifying  (W)

01 May 91 Cymru v Iceland 1-0 Friendly     (W)

28 May 08 Iceland v Cymru 0-1 Friendly    (W)

05 Mar 14 Cymru v Iceland 3-1 Friendly    (W)

On Tuesday 14th, we welcome Montenegro to a hopefully drier Cardiff City Stadium than we saw at Stadion Kraj Bistrice last month. It is possible that they could have lost all three Nations League games by time we play them, having lost 2-0 away to Iceland and 2-1 at home against Cymru. They face Türkiye away on Friday. Montenegro are the lowest ranked team in the group; 74th in the world, 45 places below us.

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Obviously we don’t have much of a record against Montenegro with them only becoming an independent country in 2006, and their first match in 2007.

12 Aug 09 Montenegro v Cymru 2-1 Friendly  (L)

03 Sep 10 Montenegro v Cymru 1-0 Euros qualifying  (L)

02 Sep 11 Cymru v Montenegro 2-1 Euros qualifying  (W)

09 Sep 24 Montenegro v Cymru 1-2 NL (W)

So far Montenegro have only scored one goal in this Nations League , and there is not much to look at attacking wise. Conditions being so bad in the reverse fixture we can’t use that game as a predictor.

Potentially Cymru are looking at six points here, with the way we played in September and Bellamy having more time with the players. We are missing big names with Ramsey, Dan James and Ampadu all out, but we do see the return of Joe Allen. Will Joe Allen start? I imagine he wouldn’t have come back just to sit on the bench for the two matches.

There is no point in trying to predict the line-up or tactics, as we have already seen, we have more than one set of tactics these days. Hopefully we will go in the final international break of the year at the top of our Nations League.  

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