Bananas

I don't know if they selfish or just stupid. Pelkas has an excuse given his age. Mak and Rodrigues should know better, but I don't know if they've just hit their ceiling and aren't capable of getting better. Klaus has been below average for nearly 12 months. It's going to be an interesting summer transfer period. Klaus really needs to get his form back.

The draw away to Qabala is coming back to bite us. If we had won that game, a draw in this fixture, and even better one where we score aways goals might have been enough. Now, we virtually need to win.

And Klaus too.

Agree italos. The encouraging thing is that we had the better of the ball by a margin. The discouraging thing is the fact that we aren't putting teams to the sword when we are playing better, and we're still conceding cheap goals off set pieces. We really need a Contreras type general at the back.

Well, another silly away loss. Could've conceded another as well. Gotta kill off the game when you're dominating. Gotta stop conceding nothing goals.

Ti kaneis re pedi mou, ti kanies. This commentator is a laugh.

Yep Sabo on the right, Rodrigues moved to left in place of Leovac. We need a spark, been flat this half.

Indeed, 1-1.

Overall, sounds like a great first half.

Have Asteras touched the ball in the last 10 minutes ?

For once the game is on at a decent time here in Australia ie. not 3 or 4 in the morning, and there is no link ... grrrrrr.

Can't find diddly.

If Maartens was half the player he was at his best, he would've been worth it. But, he came to us injured and never recovered. Thanks Huub.

Lucas is ripping it up in Spain. Whether it's just a short term phase or not time will tell. Did we sell him with a clause where we get a percentage of the next sale ?

Almost there Amorgos. Not long to go now. ;)

Agree, with current personnel, $10 billion won't help. I agree, a budget doesn't guarantee success, but it helps to attract players. More important than the transfer budget is the wage budget.

If they had such a budget, most of the current personnel wouldn't be there. I am not arguing for jvc's view that the GSL has or has not dropped in standard. That is a different issue. What I agree with jvc though, is that budget definitely 100% helps. Let me pose this question to you. If Olympiakos's budget was reduced to PAO's, and PAO's was increased to Olympiakos's, given say a 2 or 3 year period to "stabilise" things, who do you think would be winning the GSL. Olympiakos or PAO ? To me anyway, the answer is obvious.

I think the Milan teams are a little better than PAO at the moment. I can't see how a PAO with a budget of $20M to $25M just for wages, wouldn't be a better team than today.

Sounds about right. At least for Aris and PAOK. To be fair, even that is a "fake" budget because PAOK was racking up debt like no tomorrow. Par for the course for PAOK was to have to fire sale of players every few years (PAO plucked a few that way and Olympiakos) or let the players leave unpaid. Ridiculous as it sounds, I was happy when Savvidis came to PAOK just because we could pay wages. Again, sounds about right. For a "normal" squad of say 25-30 players, your "average" would be around 750K per player.

I'm with jvc on this one ... although I don't think you need to necessarily jump to a $50M budget ... Do you think Olympiakos would be what they are with a $10M budget. I can assure you that most of the players they have now, would never have signed with them if that was the case. Having said that, it depends on what you are trying to achieve. Ideally, PAO would have a budget of around $20M to $25M (at least for now) and that would enable them to get better players. I'm pretty sure if they had a budget like that, that nearly of their current 11 with the exception of Berg and maybe one or two other players, would be replaced. As for doing well in Europe, it all depends again. Budget isn't everything, but being able to pay players 500K+ wages will attract a better standard of player ... in general.

Ah, I didn't know about the December dead line. You know, getting loaned out might be the best option, because he'll get game time (hopefully) and in addition, the club will be able to assess his capabilities during match day. Training is one thing, and match day is another.

I thought the deal with Antonis signing with PAOK was that he didn't want/agree to be loaned out.

It's a shame Berbatov won't be available for the Krasnodar match. Even off the bench he'd be invaluable.

Ha ha. Thanks Amorgo. I will savour every one of the 7 days. :) Incidentally, if I had lost the best, I was thinking of going with this avatar.

I can only assume he's pleased that we finally got a clean sheet and didn't concede a weak or silly goal. He seems to go on and on about "kwality". I get it, but this isn't Juve, we have the players we have. Is this just an excuse, or is he going to try for "kwality" signings and is layout the ground work ...