He has been seriously impressive out in France for Wales at the Euros, and it now poses the question – does Joe Allen deserve a permanent shot at the Liverpool first team?

The Liverpool midfielder has been an integral part of Wales’ run to the semi-final and more often than not, he has been one of the most important players in Chris Coleman’s tight-knit squad.

And this will be more apparent than ever when The Dragons go into battle against Portgual in Wednesday’s semi-final match.

Wales will be without fellow Premier League stars Aaron Ramsey and Ben Davies, both of whom will be suspended for the crunch tie, giving Allen an even bigger platform in which to impress.

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And he’ll need to rise the occasion too. It’s the biggest game in the history of Welsh football and there will be no bigger game in which Allen will be relied upon to perform. Its sometimes easy in these big games to shift all the responsibility onto the likes of Bale and Ramsey, who are often seen as Wales’ star men.

But they’re a couple of players short now and the former Swansea man will be the one who needs to step up this time round.

A big problem Allen has encountered on the domestic scale in the past couple of years is injury. He has gone into big games for Liverpool on the back of big injury difficulties and on some occasions, he has struggled to rise to the same level as his team-mates.

But in-between some of these games, he rarely puts a foot wrong in the Liverpool side, sitting in-front of the defence and marshalling attacks quite competently indeed.

But he also gets forward when needed- perhaps more so than some people give him credit for. And we’ve seen that in Allen’s performances in the Wales side time-after-time this summer, getting forward with the likes of Bale, Robson-Kanu and Ramsey to sometimes devastating effect- as we saw in the game against Belgium.

Liverpool have been quick to respond to Allen’s strong performances by putting a £14million price tag on his head. But in this day and age, is this such a massive fee to command for a player who could potentially be playing in the Euro 2016 final in a few days time?

Not particularly, no.

But what about his return to Liverpool – what then? Its important to remember that Allen has tough competition when he returns to Melwood – with the majority of his team-mates having already started pre-season ahead of him.

It’s a little unlucky that Jurgen Klopp will begin assessing his squad without Allen being there, but I’m sure his manager will cast a keen eye on the Wales game to take a look at his performance in particular.

These are big times for Wales and many fans will be expecting Allen to step up and lead some of the lesser players in that squad into battle.

The midfielder been superb so far and has an excellent chance to set the tone come Wednesday when he will be needed like never before.

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