Bananas

Just had a flash of inspiration. 3-5-2. Varela, Crespo and one of Tosca/Xatseridi at the back. Limnios and Warda as wing backs. Pelkas, Biseswar in the middle with one of Canas/Wernbloom. Akbom and Prijo up front. Yeah I know it ain’t gonna happen ha ha.

I’d be surprised if Lucescu messes with the Varela/Crespo pairing at CB. It’s finally working and purring like a well oiled machine. Even Yiankos has not been criticising Crespo of late and that goes to show you miracles do happen. ? Which leaves us with Kitsiou and Tosca. If Kitsiou doesn’t get a run this game then he’s done for. Let’s see what happens. I’m a bit annoyed with the club that they’ve left these two positions with no depth. Sure you can slot Crespo or Tosca there but they’re a band aid. They aren’t what we need. And at RB we have only Kitsiou who isn’t rated. If you don’t rate him get another player. If I was Savvidis and Lucescu told me “I don’t rate him” I’d be getting angry at Lucescu. He’s your pick papara. The only good thing is we don’t have difficult games in the GSL so the timing is all right. But it’s a concern that Lucescu keeps flogging Matos and Vieirinha. One more thing. If Lucescu really doesn’t want Kitsiou I’d be playing Limnios as RB in some of the easier GSL games. He’d be more than fine. Possibly better than Matos who is looking a bit burnt out. And bring back Giannoulis.

Yeah man I’m harsh ha ha. But regardless, for Mitroglou doesn’t work in our NT. When your NT lacks technically, you can make up for it through work rate and organisation. In other words, run mother f##ckers. That’s what the Germans and Italians have been doing for decades. In our NT you can maybe, and I mean maybe, have one player that doesn’t run like a trelo. And that slot goes to Fortounis. Everyone else has to be fitter and harder working to overcome our technical limitations. Having said that, that’s my philosophy or take on it. To each their own. But if I was the opposition coach playing against Greece and I see a lineup with Mitroglou up front, I ain’t worried much. As to who else to put up front, right now I’d be playing Koulouris if only to piss Mitroglou off and maybe get him angry enough that he ups his game ha ha. It’s kind of sad that have so few options up front.

As a side note, it’s interesting what’s happening with Panathinaikos this season. If they continue with their good run, I hope this inspires other teams (I’m looking at you Aris) to have some faith in their youth and give them a go. Added bonus is you don’t have to pay big wages. But, this takes having a very good manager who is given freedom and time to build. People forget when Alex Ferguson took over Man Utd he didn’t win jack for the first few years. Another thought. PAOK has good youth these days. If I was Aris I’d be raiding the best youth of not only PAOK but all teams in Greece. I think a lot of these players could be tempted if offered first team football and a professional contract.

Seems like a brain dead decision. Typical Greek mentality. So over this crap. Was the team in danger of being relegated ? That would be the only valid reason for even considering such a move. Let’s see who the replacement is. Hopefully there isn’t too much disruption. And all this because Aris lost to PAOK, AEK and Olympiakos. Did the president expect to beat these teams ? If so, he’s delusional. If anything, he should be happy because Aris played good solid football and now after these games you can identify where the team is lacking and reinforce accordingly. But hey, that would be logical.

I hope so man. Send the message from the beginning, long and loud and god damn f##king hard. Two major issues. The first is the complacency of the players. Too many keep getting selected when they shouldn’t be. The second is if he’ll change the system we play to suit the players we have. We don’t have wingers so why bother with a system that uses them. At least that’s what I reckon. Vlschodimos in goal. I’d be playing 3 at the back. 2 attacking wing backs that can run all day. Probably Limnios for the right wb or Bakakis. Left side the young kid that plays for Olympiakos. In the middle Zeca as the 6. Mantalos and Pelkas playing as 8’s. Pelkas for me is really an 8 anyway. The kid runs all day and doesn’t have the game to be a number 10. Up front Fourtounis and a striker. I say “a striker” because I wouldn’t be playing Mitroglou but I know there are many that would disagree. I don’t have time for lazy players. Besides, he hasn’t been interested in playing soccer since leaving Olympiacos. The guy has been more than happy to be a bench warmer and collect big pay checks for the last 3 years. Might as well stick him on the bench for the NT also.

Yes. Moments like these is where you kill the game off. P.S. This was the first game I watched live this season and our perfect start gets destroyed. Jinx. No more live games for me.

Only saw the second half. Thanks for link that was posted. We only really woke up after we conceded the goal (great finish). Why we even let them get into the last 3rd of the ground so easily I’m not sure. I assume we thought we’d get a goal easily on the break. Lazy soccer playing on auto pilot. A fair result all in all, even though we looked very much like scoring towards the end.

It’s no ones fault on this forum that half a dozen or so mongoloid Olympiacos fans are feral human beings with zero decency who would troll, heckle and just cause untold trouble on this and the old greeksoccer forum. Then when they get booted they act like they’ve been treated unfairly. May they enjoy their new site where they belong. It’s no ones fault on this forum that other posters got all frothing at the mouth over U.S. politics to the point that the forum became toxic. Every day right wing left wing blah blah. Yeah sure, Hillary or Trump is gonna save ya. Idiots. May they enjoy their new site. Maybe we’re paranoid ? Maybe we’re just normal. Maybe these people just don’t know how to have a conversation ? Maybe these people haven’t worked out what’s important in life.

I did consider subscribing to the site you’re referring to, because some good posters went there, but unfortunately I am a communist and I’m not allowed to join. I didn’t know I was communist but some of the fascists opened my eyes and showed me the truth.

I don't mind the Aris boys, but I like you more. xxx ooo The long posts, I'm not criticizing them. It just makes me laugh. The to and fro between yourself, Athens4 and the Ariani. It's like, ok, here we go again. To be fair, you've all behaved like gentlemen and haven't let it get personal (not that I've noticed) so there is that. I don't know (and it's probably good for my sanity) all the politics from the old days. And I'm not a Τούρκο, I'm a Βούλγαρακη.

Crazy kids.

@Emperor where do you get those statistics from ? Very cool. It looks like Football Manager on steroids.

One of my wet dreams has been to sign Stafylidis again. I’ll leave the others to your imagination. From time to time I’ll check on him to see how he’s going. I haven’t checked for this year and to my surprise he hasn’t even played 1 minute! Even worse, he hasn’t even been selected for any match squads. That was my first surprise. My second surprise is that his contract expires end of this season. So theoretically we could pre-sign him during this winter.

I can read Greek just fine. Except Yiankos posts that go for 1000 words ha ha. That can be a bit much ha ha. I don’t check out those sites. Mostly just sport24.gr and for a laugh I’ll watch some Raptopoulos, Alefantos and even sometimes Ante Gia. As for the grinia what can I say. Stupid people with stupid analysis. When you have players that have been together for 18 months already that is like a 1 goal advantage. A team like AEK or PAOK need only play good football for 10 or 15 minutes (and often that is all they do) because in that 10 or 15 minutes they can score the goal to get the win. They can defend well enough also because the same players have all been playing together and now know each others game and strengths and weaknesses. That stability counts for a lot but in Greece we like to do 15 metagrafes every summer and 4 in the winter. To be fair, with Aris it’s a bit different because they have to build a whole new team for A Ethniki so I understand why so many metagrafes. What I don’t understand is the grinia. Especially when there are so many positive signs compared to negative signs.

Yeah man! ?

The loss to AEK will hopefully drive home the point that you need time for the players to know each other. You think you can just scrap together 15 new players and make a team that doesn’t have a bad day ? I am actually surprised how good Aris is playing this year and I hope the *grinia* doesn’t start with the manager who seems to be doing a decent job. He still needs to learn what players are capable of, which player play well with what system, which players play well together, which plays crack under pressure etc. If they start with the sacking of managers then forget it. Back to square one all over again. Let him do his job. One bad game to a team that is very experienced and stable is not the end of the world.

Must have been a seriously slow news day. The player making the comment was a nobody Portuguese player who was probably over the hill when Angel coached Platanias. Talk about a whatever statement from a whatever player for a whatever article. For any manager in the world there will be players that didn’t get along with that manager and didn’t approve of them. Big f##king deal. I am *very* curious to see if Angel shakes things up with his call ups. I am also curious to see how the players react to him. If they don’t warm to him, I can see them putting in two limp performances to bury him. That would be very typical of the Elliniko attitude. I’d drop half the f##king first team. 3-5-2. Vlachodimos as GK. Manolas, Siovas and Socratis in the back. Zeca as a hacker. Everyone else *fight* for your positions..

I have no idea what you’re talking but you made me laugh you crazy kid.? As for your 11, I agree with Blackhawk and I think Pelkas will start. We need “run” in the middle. Biseswar in the 2nd half when the pace settles will be a good sub. Matos has been poor by his lofty standards, time to get his game on. Likewise Vieirinha. Watching Liverpool live now. Don’t support them but god damn, I love it when they sing “you’ll never walk alone”.

Perfectly summed up Dutch.

El Khaddori is a ... not quite player. He’s obviously very technical and intelligent. But he’s not quite an 8, not quite a 10 and not quite a winger. He definitely doesn’t fit into a 4-4-2 or 4-2-3-1. In Italy where you can get 4-3-2-1 and 3-5-2 (3 in the middle) maybe he fits in better. The thing is, it’s not that he’s a poor player. He’s decent but he’s just not particularly great. Very much a rotation player but on a high wage. I wouldn’t be fussed if he left at the end of the season.

I’ve always liked the Angel even if he is a bit nutty. I think the given the current poor state of the NT and piss poor attitude of the players he’ll be just the ticket to put a firecracker up their asses.

No I don’t like the idea of B teams either. It’s just another way for teams with money to accumulate huge squads and players under contract. It should be sufficient for each team to have their list of 25-30 or so squad players. If they want to loan players out to B Ethniki or exoteriko that’s fine. But not in A Ethniki. If the player is too good for B Ethniki but you don’t think he’s good enough for PAOK then sell the player and let them move on with their career.

Possibly before your time kiddo. I put it in more for comic relief. The irony is that Anastasiadis does have a football brain. He has an eye for talent and as Achilles said he can identify flaws during a game and adjust. A skill many managers lack. However, he also does come across as uncouth. I don’t know if he’s got it anymore. I don’t know if he’ll win over the players, which is more than half the battle. But either way I’d have him over Skibbe the Uninspired. I’m also hoping he’ll bring back some players into the NT that should be there and change the general mentality of the team which has become woefully accepting of poor performances. Paixte bala pethamena.

I do so in the hope you will stop posting in our forums but alas I fear my efforts are in vain. Feel free though to slag me off elsewhere.