Gary Speed admits his Wales side lack a winning mentality after defeat to England

Aaron Ramsey and Scott Parker

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Wales manager Gary Speed has admitted that his side lack a ‘winning mentality’ after their 2-0 defeat to England at the Millennium Stadium in their Euro 2012 Qualifier.

Goals from Frank Lampard and Darren Bent in the first 20 minutes were enough to seal the three points for Fabio Capello’s men and the new Welsh boss was left to reflect on a poor first half of football from his team.

He told Sky Sports: “I was disappointed with the first half performance.

“We are a developing team, but we are used to getting beat really. We haven’t got that winning mentality at the moment and to lose a goal in the first five minutes killed us.

“From then on, in the next 20-25 minutes we struggled to be fair.”

But Speed was pleased with how his side reacted in the second half and believes they will develop as a side over time.

He conceded the Three Lions were far better on the day but was delighted with his players’ attitude as they did not give up despite being outclassed for the majority of the match.

“The way they came out in the second half and played – we tried to get on the ball and showed some spirit, which bodes well for the future,” said Speed. 

“We are a developing team. Hopefullya year from  now we will look back at this game at think we have learned lots from it.

“England are a very good team and they showed that first half, but I am delighted with the way they went about it in the second half because they could have easily thrown the towel in but they didn’t.

“We had a lot of possession without causing their goalie to many problems but Wayne Hennessey didn’t have too much to do second half either.”

Speed was also pleased to see his team try to play football and not resort panic tactics after falling behidn early on.

He added: “The positives are the way they came out second half and carried on doing the things we want them to do.

“We are trying to develop a style of play and it’s going to make us successful and this is the first game of that. So like I say a year or two or further down the line we can nail that down and make us successful.

“They’re a top team, they’re top six in the world and they played well first half. They did their homework a little bit I suppose and they closed us down really well and stopped us playing which is want we want to do. But I was pleased with our second half performance.”

“The players are all down and disappointed in the dressing room and rightly so – we all are with the result.

“But looking at the bigger picture into the future we’ll learn from this – England are a top team we won’t always be playing teams as good as England and along the way hopefully that style can develop and make us successful.”