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Men's Football Gunter denies claims that players begged Coleman to stay

Chris Gunter denied accusations yesterday that player-power tried to keep Ryan Giggs’s predecessor Chris Coleman as Wales manager.

Wales’s new era under Giggs starts tomorrow as the Dragons kick off the China Cup against the hosts in Nanning, with the Czech Republic and Uruguay also involved in the four-team tournament.

It is the first time the Wales squad has been together since Coleman, who guided the country to the semi-finals of Euro 2016, surprisingly chose to end his six-year stay as national team boss in November and take over at Championship strugglers Sunderland.

Gunter was among a group of senior players who reportedly lobbied Coleman to remain, but he said: “It was made out that there was a group of players who were knocking his hotel door and begging him to stay.

“It wasn’t quite like that because players don’t really have an influence on what happens above.

“Certainly this group of players wouldn’t think just because we’ve done well in the past we deserve the right to make decisions like that.

“I know that’s been said in the past about this group of players, but it’s not the case.

“Everybody wanted the manager to stay and, as footballers, you buy into what’s happening at the time.

“We wanted the manager to stay because he was a massive part of Welsh history and everybody loved playing under him.

“But in this case I think we were the last to know what was going on.”

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