So Cinderella won't be going to the ball after all. The prospect of Wales meeting England in a World Cup play-off in November was never anything more than a long shot, but the desperate flight of fancy was finally laid to rest in Cardiff on Saturday.

The Welsh needed maximum points from their last three games to entertain any hope of finishing group runners-up but reality kicked in as they spurned the opportunity to register their first victory of their World Cup campaign and to break their duck at the Millennium stadium.

They failed to beat Group Five's bottom side but their manager Mark Hughes remains convinced his team are on the right track.

"I was pleased with the first-half performance but not the second," the veteran Blackburn striker said. "The lads could have made their job a lot easier just by doing the fundamentals right but we're making progress.

Before half-time a Iwan Roberts knock-down allowed Ryan Giggs to burst into the area but the stand-in captain's right-foot chip went wide of the right-hand post.

In the 52nd minute Giggs whipped a free-kick from the left into the six-yard box only for Roberts to flash his header wide of the far post. As Wales struggled to break down Armenia, a Craig Bellamy header hit the bar and Robbie Savage shot wide, before Simon Davies and Giggs went close in a final flourish.

WALES (4-3-3): P Jones; Delaney, Melville, Symons, Jenkins (Barnard, 79min); Savage, C Robinson (M Jones, 79), Davies; Bellamy, Roberts, Giggs.

ARMENIA (3-5-1-1): Berezovski; Sukiasyan, Dokhoyan, Hovsepyan; Vardanyan, Khachatryan, Petrosyan (Demirtshyan, 89), Voskanyan (Harutyunyan, 66), Shahgeldyan (Simonyan, 75); Dokhoyan; Movsesian.

Referee: J Attard (Malta).