Chris Coleman has revealed he feels his own standards as Wales manager have dropped.
But the man who guided Wales to the semi-finals of Euro 2016 is determined to regain lost ground against Serbia on Saturday night.
Coleman’s teams face their most important game of the current World Cup qualifying campaign at the Cardiff City Stadium against a Serbian side who have marched to the top of Group D.
Wales are back in third place – two points behind – points that were dropped when they drew their last match 1-1 at home to Georgia.
The draw, says Coleman, was a consequence of both he and his players losing their focus.
“I can’t be a hypocrite,” he says. “I was on about the players losing their edge in the last camp and I think that goes for myself as well – we just came off it a little bit.
“We only do well as a group, in my opinion, when this next challenge is our only focus – when we don’t think of anything else.
“I came off it myself and I had a look at myself a little bit in the last camp.
“I wasn’t looking forward too much, but an ugly 1-0 win against Georgia in the last campaign would have been fantastic. But, now, all of a sudden, there’s a feeling at 1-0 that we’ve got to go on and win 3-0.
“Just because Georgia are where they are in the rankings that doesn’t mean that’s how good they are. They are decent and I think we took it a little bit for granted.
“We got that first goal and we thought we can go on now and entertain.
“That’s nonsense – if it’s 1-0 and it’s ugly then who cares? It’s three points.
“We’ve got to get back to that and I think we just came off that a little bit.”
Serbia thrashed Wales 6-1 in September 2012 and completed the double over them a year later with a 3-0 victory in qualifying for the 2014 World Cup.
Those games were the real low points of manager Chris Coleman’s five-year reign, but Wales recovered from those heavy defeats to make the semi-finals in France last summer.
But Serbia lead Group D following their 3-2 victory over Austria last month, ahead of the Republic of Ireland on goal difference.
Their Southampton winger Dusan Tadic is Serbia’s answer to Gareth Bale, claims team-mate Filip Kostic.
Kostic is confident Tadic can upstage Real Madrid star Bale and said: “[Gareth] Bale stands out in a solid Welsh team as the one player who can turn the game around by himself.
“But we have our own match winner in Dusan Tadic. We’ve made a good start in the qualifiers and are confident that we can get a result in Cardiff.”
Tadic has made a significant impact to Serbia’s World Cup qualifying campaign so far, scoring three goals and setting up the other five.
