James Collins slammed Nottingham Forest goalkeeper Wayne Hennessey after his rush of blood to the head left Wales’ hopes of World Cup glory in tatters.
Rob Page’s team need to beat England on Tuesday to stand any chance of progression after losing 2-0 to Iran.
Hennessey had been brilliant during the game but in the 86th minute he came rushing out of his box and wiped out Mehdi Taremi.
The referee initially showed the goalkeeper a yellow card but after consulting VAR opted to send the Forest man off.
Collins made 51 appearances for Wales and he was summarising for BBC Radio 5 Live throughout the contest.
He wasn’t happy with Hennessey for his moment of madness and took to slating the Forest man.
Collins said live on air: “An absolute disaster for Wales.
“It’s an awful decision to come out, he doesn’t win the ball and he has to be sent off.”
Hennessey has only played twice for Forest during 2022/23 but in fairness, he was signed on a free transfer to act as backup.
Dean Henderson is the team’s number one goalkeeper and having joined from Manchester United he will remain in that role.
Collins slammed Hennesey after Wales disaster at World Cup
The former central defender is talking like a man who never made a mistake during his career.
This was a high-pressure situation. Hennessey made a mistake but he took a risk and sadly it backfired.
In fairness, were it not for the brilliance of the Forest man throughout the game, Iran would have been out of sight a lot earlier.
Aaron Ramsey and Gareth Bale are supposed to be the two match-winners in the Wales team.
Both have done very little at this tournament and Bale in particular against Iran was completely AWOL.
It’s a tad harsh to completely go to town on Hennessey considering he’s been the Wales hero so often before.
Still, he will have to bounce back from this pretty quickly and hopefully, he can go again for Forest when domestic action returns.