THYRA13

Crazy is to have all summer and end up in a situation like this with 2 days to go.

Well,i sure hope to eat my words abouts us not getting diogo. I just hope i am not jinxing it by speaking too soon. I also hope we do go and get brandao,who is big, tall,good on the ball and has decent speed. The best thing so far is that the guys we are getting are not only good players but also that they are not old. Keeping my fingers crossed.

I think you hit the nail on the head with Xrisikopoulos.I have been thinking for a month now how Ivits had done such a good job convincing people to come to Greece last year.

Portugesa turned down Arsenal's 9 million pound offer for Diogo because they wanted a lot more. And they say we will buy him? Yeah right!

I watched the friendly with Twende today. Our team looked like s%$#!. The dutch made us look like amateurs. They could have scored 3 more goals easily.

I dont like Lemonis performance ,but I am very surprised they fired him at this stage..

galletti---------------------torosidis------------ledesma-------------------------belluschi -----------------------------nunez------------lua-lua---------------------------------------- OR -------------------------torosidis----------------ledesma----------------------------------- ------------------------------------belluschi-------------------------------------------------- galletti-------------------------------nunez-------------------------------------lua-lua----- Hoping that the 20 min or so that the Belluschi who performed so well against Chelsae continue to show up...... In this case I think his style of play would better benefit the team from a central position while he is given freedom to roam. Assuming and hoping Toro stays with us and matures a bit more, I would like to see himplay alongside Lendesma in the middle. Even though both are defensive players ( Ledesma beeing the guy farther back ),Toro can run up and down the field, has speed to cover and counter and height to go up for the ball (up front and in the middle). If Bellouschi plays in front of those two we could play with 3 men up front ,but here is where I see the problem. Such a formation demands a great deal from your wide players up front , and also from your wide defenders. I do not think that Galletti has the legs to last a whole game ,game after game for a whole season running up and down constantly. He has all that we desire up front, and every time he is not on the field the team loses a lot. Lua Lua on the other hand..... I don't think he has the will or the desire to do so. I have to say that I am rather disappointed in him this year. I expected more ,a lot more. His passing, and passing decisions have been bad more often than not and many many times he just stands in front of a defender with the ball at his feet without making a move or pass for way too long. Usually by the time he finally makes his moves opposing help has arrived. He has had some moments of great brilliance but he is very inconsistent. You really hurt your team when you play like that. Especially against very strong opponents. The key nowadays is speed, speed, speed, and also very fast, almost instantaneous reactions and decision making on the field especially in European games. This is something our team does not do well. We were greatly exposed last Wed when we had to do just that. The ball would go to one of our players ( ok sometimes it would.... we were so awful ) and pressure would arrive right along with the ball.Result? As we all saw, our player would immediately lose possession because he was unready/unable to move away from it (the pressure) or he did not know his options already ( even though to be fair it was a combination of both the player's inability and the absence of viable options) . This is indicative of inferior talent and inferior preparation. We need some more players if we want to go past the Chelsea's of the world, and for that not to be just luck most of the time. I'm am not upset we lost 3-0 to them or 6-0 for that matter ,it it the performance of the players and the coach. The commentators were correct. Schoolyard performance from most players and coach. Which positions would you guys try to improve if we were to play such a system as above...?The one with Bellouschi in the middle. How about the defence?

All I can say is that it is a miracle this did not happen earlier or more often.The Stadium had only 2 exits on that "petallo",(one on each corner with #7 been the one closest to the "electrico station) as opposed to the opposite petallo that had 5 (13-18). The vast majority of the people (over 80%) at the side where the tragedy happened used the gate 7 to exit since it was so close to the train and all the bus lines on Leoforos Posidonos. To add to that, the curvature of the stadium made it impossible to see what was going on in front of you unless you were within 20-30 feet from the stairs leading down and even then, you could not see the people down the two flight of stairs leading to the exit. To make it even worse after you went down about 10 steps or so there was a platyskalo about 10 feet wide and then another set of stairs that was 1/2 the width of the stairs above ,so that people at that point had to push hard to the right so as to funnel through to the narrower lower staircase. It got even worse when you finally hit ground level as at that point you had to take a hard 90 degree left turn and finally exit. If you did not manage to turn in time you were pretty much halkomania on the wall in front of you. Well you would think that you were home free at that point right? Hell no! The size of the area where you had to take the hard 90 degree turn was about 12 x 20 and the sliding exit door ( which I never so closed) had 3 turnstiles blocking the way. One was full length and permanently installed ( thus narrowing the area even more) and the other two were removable and about waist high ( they were supposed to be installed during fan entry,and lifted up and set out of the way 15 min before the game was over to facilitate the fans exit. I can tell you from personal experience that after almost every derby or important game from the early to the late 70's the two removable turnstiles were not been removed,since the two stadium employees assigned to that gate were to busy watching the game from the upstairs diazoma . We saw them there all the time after the games started. It was just a matter of time. Someone was going to be killed it was just a question of who. It was a miracle it went this long( early 80s) without serious injuries or worse. I have seen people getting banged up pretty bad going down those stairs and if you fell or stumbled going down when the way was still blocked by the turnstiles you were going to take a bunch of people with you for the ride. Nothing you could do. There was wall to wall people behind you pushing forward. The design was bad and the employees "itan ellines". Ti ixes mana mou , ti eixa panda. I will always mourn my buddies ,as we all new each other at least "fatsika". God bless their souls.

DP

This is stupid. I hope all the rumors for attacking players are false. The priority is ( and should have been all summer long) a creative center mid. We can get all the attacking players in the world and it will be a total waste if there is nobody to create. Their problem seems to be twofold. Players of certain caliber are not ready to come to Greece, and if they do, you have to brake the bank to get them. Get a starting center mid first and worry about the attack latter, since i think this by itself will cure our scoring problems .