Chris Coleman: Wales have to get off the mark

CHRIS Coleman believes it is vital Wales get their World Cup qualifying campaign up and running in Serbia tonight (7.30pm).

Wales began their quest to reach the Brazil finals in two years’ time with a 2-0 defeat to Belgium at the Cardiff City Stadium last Friday.

Croatia head the early Group A table along with Belgium after they beat Macedonia, while Serbia drew in Scotland.

Coleman is again likely to be without a number of key personnel in Novi Sad, but insists Wales cannot hide behind excuses.

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Instead they must move off the mark to avoid losing touch with the early pace-setters in their pool.

“It is important to get something,” said the Wales boss.

“People are not going to look at our situation and say we had this guy and this guy and that guy missing, they are going to say ‘you’ve got no points’, which is fair enough.

“We have to show the same attitude as we showed against Belgium.

“We will try to keep 11 players on the pitch obviously and if we do that we will pick points up, I am certain of that.

“I am certain of that because we have just played the strongest team in the group and done well.

“I feel a lot better about our performance even though we didn’t get the points, but these games are all about points.”

Wales had James Collins sent off after only 26 minutes of the game against a star-studded Belgian team containing Premier League stars like Eden Hazard, Marouane Fellaini and Vincent Kompany.

That made a tough task near-impossible as Coleman was already without the likes of Craig Bellamy, Joe Allen and Neil Taylor.

Allen is set to feature this evening after shaking off the sickness bug that struck him down in the build-up to Belgium’s visit.

But Collins starts a suspension after his dismissal.

Bellamy, Taylor, Andrew Crofts, Wayne Hennessey and Jack Collison will all again be missing.

“We knew the players we had lost before the Belgium game and even with our strongest side that is a tough game. Take half a dozen away from that and down to ten men you have a mountain to climb,” added Coleman.

“If we had got to half-time it would have been better psychologically, but in terms of endeavour and desire the players were excellent. Maybe we could have had one or two decisions go for us and not against us.

“It is not going to be easy in Serbia, it was never going to be easy.

“But we can’t sit here talking about all the players we have missing, that we have lost to Belgium and had a man sent off.

“We have to flip that around and look at the positives from the last performance, and there were plenty of them.

“We have to take them across to Serbia and if we repeat many aspects of how we played against Belgium we will get a result, no doubt about it.”