Bananas

We got knocked out of Europe and the Cup earlier than usual, so the players had to play one game a week. Not a big ask really. The only excuse is if a player is carrying an injury which can affect them from getting back to 100% fitness. Other than that, I don't buy fatigue as an excuse. I think the fatigue is more in their brain ... it's a mental thing.

Interesting interview. Klaus said "the team is sick" and "players are putting themselves ahead of the team". Fair enough, but without knowing specifics it just sounds vague from an outsiders perspective. He said he'll elaborate after the last game but we'll see. I hope it's not just vague observations like "the players aren't playing for the shirt". The massive drop in level from the beginning of the year is bizarre. Were we playing above ourselves at the beginning while other teams were still getting into their stride ? Is where we are now, our "best" level. Are the players unfit ? If they are, that's no excuse. When things began to fall apart, it was our defense that was the problem. We could score but also conceded easily. Now we can't score at all ;)

I'm assuming that's the wage and transfers budgets combined ?

Kitsiou is ok, don't get me wrong. But can he walk into the best 11 of Olympiakos, PAO or even PAOK ? See, that's the problem. We have around 15 Kitsiou quality players in our squad. Guys that are pretty good ... on their day, but just aren't at that next level. I'm not saying the kid has to go, but we need better quality all round. I'd trade you 15 of our Kitsiou quality players for 1 Berg.

pash, your creepiness is entirely self earned. I take no credit for it ;) As for our beloved team, it's ridiculous how bad we are at the moment. I asked a friend of mine the other day who is a PAO supporter, if he could have any players from PAOK for free, which would he take ? All he could come up with is ... maybe Kace. That's it. And you know what he's probably right. We have a small core of decent players. They are Skondras, Vitor, Rats, Kace, Noboa, Tziolis (controversial pick I know), Mak, Pereyra and Klaus. That's it. 9 players no other real depth. Sure we have some up and coming players who are still developing but I'm talking about players that are ready now. Players that help contribute to winning a title. Of the players mentioned how many are fit and in form right now ? 3 or 4 maybe. No wonder once we play any decent opposition they can give us a hard time. You need a squad where if a player is unfit or out of form, you have someone ready made that can just slot in and do just as good. We don't have that. Right now, only Kace is playing. All the rest in one way or another are playing below their best, and in an ideal world, should be on the bench. It's going to be an interesting transfer period ....

Right now the way the team is playing, I'd be surprised if we could manage an away win.

Good link http://graphics.wsj.com/greece-debt-timeline/ that shows all the upcoming repayments.

*thumbs up* Nea Bafra. Yes, my bad, forgot Boloni.

Great interview. Savvidis seems to be doing the right things in the back office so we can't really ask for more. He's paid off the debt, brought in Jack Angel and now we have our own Viking TD. If we can get a good manager as well, things could be looking up for real.

I'd be happy with a team that has energy, cohesion and can actually string 5 passes together. We always look so random.

Wow, how good would it be if we could get Boloni back as manager as well. A man can dream .... I agree this was a surprise appointment. For once we did things outside the media circus which is already +1 in my eyes. He definitely has pedigree and hopefully he can find a way to attract players that normally wouldn't come to the club. Also, and more importantly, hopefully the club can begin to develop a winning mentality. Will be interesting to see what happens with Maduro and Martens now that he's here.

The reason is we keep hiring average managers. Donis and Anastasiadis are fine if you want to come 2nd to 4th. To become considerably better, we need a better manager. We tried to do the right thing with Huub but it didn't work out. At the end of the day the only decent managers we've had in the last 15 years are Bajevic and Santos. And they did well despite having no transfer budget and constant money problems.

Ok smart ass, maybe I jumped the gun a little.

PAOK's over drive button doesn't work. It's been malfunctioning since 1985. It briefly (for some unknown reason) splutters briefly to life whenever we play Olympiakos and then just dims out again.

The World Cup going to Qatar in 2022 was really the icing on the cake. It was shameless.

PAOK's modus operandi needs to change. To his credit, Savvidis has paid the debt (massive achievement) and pays the players on time (also a massive achievement for PAOK). But on the football pitch, we've gone nowhere or backwards. Hopefully this new TD can give the club some direction because we definitely need it. Our usual approach each year is to try to sign some decent quality players. Of course, if they are decent quality why would they want to come to PAOK ? So, as the transfer deadline approaches, we lower our standards, and then in the end I think we just make signings for the sake of it. Or, we do the classic PAOK and sign a player from a team we played who happened to have a good game. My hope is that the new TD can actually judge the worth of a player ... which is always subjective ... and can actually try and build a team that is structured. During the Savvidis era, we've had 3 managers (Donis, Stefens and Anastasiadis) who have all failed and been given the boot early. That's problem number one to fix. Problem number two is to stop with all the mediocre transfers, but I'm not optimistic we can do that. We seem to just transfer players for the sake of it, even though they aren't a significant improvement on what we already have. If you look at our signings in the last 3 years we have :- 2012/2013 ------------- Vukic - super sub. Would have loved to have had this guy in his prime. Katsouranis, Schildenfeld, Lawrence - "decent" signings. They weren't terrible most of the time. Jacobo, Itandje - why bother ? Not good enough. Camara, Oliseh, Khumalo, Vivian - lol. 2013/2014 ------------- Stoch, Insuarralde, Natcho - all decent players but why bother ? Lucas - good signing. We finally have a good signing and he's 26 years old, and he doesn't want to play for us, and he's doing well in La Liga. Sigh. Skondras - good signing. Vitor - good signing. Tzavellas, Tziolis - seemed like a good at the time. Maduro, Martens, Spyropoulos, Lopez, Ninis, Necid, Hoesen - lol. 2014/2015 ------------- Mak, Rat, Pereyra - good signings. Golasa - still young. Noboa, Costa - time will tell. So, that's it. We have about 5 good signings in the last 3 years. All the rest were either fails or players on loan that would've left anyway. We need to do better.

I love Lino. The guy is a legend. But if we sign him, I'm going to boycott the team for a year.

Can't say I'm surprised. PAO is an ok team, but we are much worse. Disjointed and unbalanced. Looking forward to losing in Athens.

I agree with you 100% that he has a right to be angry, but the way he did it was a unprofessional. This sort of thing should be done behind closed doors not on the pitch. But, at least it was funny ;)

Sad to say but I expect a draw, or at best, an uninspiring 1 goal win where we ride our luck.

Maybe his style resonates with Yanks where a lot of the sports in the US are all about statistics ? What a lot of people don't grasp is that it doesn't matter if you're the best football genius in the world, if the players don't listen to you, it doesn't mean anything. If Rogers has lost the players (and it does seem that way) then it's over.

Oh js1000 you optimist you!

Ante, might as well have a laugh about Brendan Rogers.

At the end of the day, was Greece in a better position before the Euro, say in the 1990's or now ? That is the most important question. There is no reason why Greece couldn't return to an economy of that level after a Grexit. If that's the best they can do due to their crazy labour laws, left right crazy politics (which as Che pointed out is all such a load of s%$#!, I can't believe anyone believes in that crap these days), people taking 10 years (lol) to finish their degrees, then so be it. That's as far as the Greek economy can go. If they want to do better, then they'll have to do it off their own bat, but at least they'll have done it themselves (or not), as opposed to having EU technocrats governing the country.

Pfft, never gonna happen. The economic repercussions would be too severe for the EU and worse, the loss of reputation (in their eyes) would hurt them so bad they'd be sulking about it for years. The sort of capitulation Germany wants won't happen. They need to be a bit more creative if they want to sell more austerity to the greek people. My money is on a 3rd bailout and let the next party in power deal with the problem.