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Disappointing to lose, seems the big 6 weeks finally caught up to the squad and we put in an average performance. If you had offered me qualification to the Conference League group stage and 6 points from our first 3 league games before a ball had been kicked in July I would have taken it. OFI is a good team who has kept it's core and their coach, plenty of teams will struggle to get a result in Crete this year. International break doesn't come at a bad time for us, allows the new signings time to work with Lucescu and gel with the squad. Hopefully no injuries for our internationals and the boys come back raring to go for a local derby.

Good points. Poyet has turned the NT fortunes around. It’s a shame Fortounis retired from international duty. I was thinking he would be on the team this go around. Always said he was such a top class footballer. Anyways if we get 4pts it will be a success.

I am a fan of Poyet and what he's doing with the Ethniki, but there are 3-4 of these call-ups that are puzzling. Bouchalakis and Limnios have not played one minute of football in the first month of the season, yet they are un-droppable. While Alexandropoulos and Konstantelias are not called-up. Tzavellas he wants for experience(dressing room etc), but seems like he's played one out of three for a newly promoted side in Turkey, not exactly inspiring form. Poyet is trying to do what Otto and Santos did before him, have a 'club' like feel to the NT where it's the same core of players that are called-up. While that has some merit it can also lead to disharmony amongst players/coaches/fans. Ultimately if we get results people will forget about these decisions, but if you add the layer of Fortounis stepping away the media and football public are starting to slowly starting to turn on Poyet. The atmosphere around the team had been so positive because of great results, hopefully this doesn't throw too much of a spanner into the works and the team can keep chugging along. You can guarantee if we come out of the 2 games next week with 4 points, everyone will be singing his praises. Let's see what happens.

Fortounis did this IMO because he didn't get called up against the Ireland and France matches. I believe reports came out he was disappointed not to get selected for those matches so he went from being disappointed to not wanting to be part of the NT in the span of two months? Anyways sucks but it is what it is... Here are the call ups: Βλαχοδήμος, Πασχαλάκης, Αθανασιάδης, Γιαννούλης, Τσιμίκας, Μπάλντοκ, Ρότα, Τζαβέλλας, Χατζηδιάκος, Κουλιεράκης, Μαυροπάνος, Ρέτσος, Κουρμπέλης, Μάνταλος, Σιώπης, Μπουχαλάκης, Παπανικολάου, Μπακασέτας, Χατζηγιοβάνης, Λημνιός, Μασούρας, Πέλκας, Φούντας, Ιωαννίδης, Γιακουμάκης, Παυλίδης.