Bananas

I think right now he is the best we can get. The idea of getting a really good manager has been discussed a lot. The simple answer is a very good manager will *not* come to PAOK. Now maybe if Savvidis is willing to spend over 1 million in wages he might tempt someone but even then I'm not sure it would work out. As for Lucescu I was relieved we signed him after Stoogeovic. Lucescu knows the Greek league and the teams which is a plus. He's also got a decent record with Xanthi which is another plus. But we don't know how he'll cope with the job of managing a big club. On the plus side we are playing decent overall. By that I mean it's not like any team is playing us off the park. Our two failures in the derbies were to teams that played ultra conservative and ultra defensive. Who would've that Olympiakos or AEK would be afraid of us ? And yet they are. It shows in their game plan. Where we lack is in the ability to penetrate their defences. This is stuff we all know. It is what it is and hopefully with time the team can overcome this. I think tactically he's making some decisions I can't understand, but I don't really know what's happening in training. Why is he persisting with El Khaddouri ? Why is he playing Vieirinha (why did we even buy him) ? I can't understand why Mak didn't start this match. AEK play with 3 at the back so there would've been space on the flanks if you instruct Mak to hug the line. I don't think the combination of Pelkas, El Khaddouri and Vieirinha has enough goal scoring power. Technically they're solid but as a combination ... not enough penetration. Biseswar needs to start more but again here there is politics and fear. As far as his relationship with the players they seem to like him which is good. But I'm not sure if they're afraid of him or their position in the pecking order. Overall, I'm not impressed with Lucescu but I'm willing to give him a shot seeing as he had a shitty or no pre season and realistically we can't find a replacement for him. So the answer to your question is ... maybe. In other words, I'm not entirely convinced ... yet ... that Lucescu is the wrong man for the job. :)

Just a topic to see what people think of the managers we've had in the Savvidis era. Grade them out of 10. Donis - 4/10 - Not ready for a club like PAOK. Too inexperienced. To be fair not one of Savvidis's appointments. Huub Stevens - 1/10 - Woeful. The sort of appointment that works in computer simulation games but not in reality. Angelos Anastasiadis - 6/10 - Got us to 1st place in the league but followed this with a massive slump thereafter. Not sure what would have happened if we gave him more time. Igor Tudor - 4/10 - Arrogant and inflexible. Vladimir Ivic - 7/10 - Improved in the second half of the season. Still made elementary mistakes but to be expected from a new manager. Razvan Lucescu - 5/10 - Has improved the team defensively. That's about it. And here's a clip of Aggelos team talk before the Arsenal game, in the good old days when we had a mostly Greek squad. That is back in the day when Greek players were half decent.

Yes and no. He inherited a lot of the old squad but the new signings are enough to make the old core not the new core. Core players from last season that have not played much this season include Crespo, Canas, Shakhov, Biseswar and Campos. That is half the team! Up front Vieirinha, El Khaddouri and Pelkas are the new attacking midfielders. Last season it was Campos, Biseswar, Rodrigues and after Rodrigues was sold it was Henrique (who I think we are idiots for loaning). Pelkas and Mystakidis got some game time here and there. If you take any team and replace 3 of their attackers with new players you have a completely different dynamic. Heck, replacing one player can change the dynamic of a team. All I'm saying is that this idea of it being the same core ... not quite. Rey, Zambrano, Mauricio, Vieirinha, El Khaddouri and Pelkas are now core. Last season they were not.

Why does Lucescu have to go so early ? Wasn't Ivic just as bad or worse last season ? He didn't get the team clicking until after Christmas. This game went as expected. If you were going to put money on which PAOK player would get a red card, we all know who we would put our money on. A dour game with few chances. What a surprise. The biggest mistake Lucescu is making is playing Vieirinha and El Khaddouri regardless of their form, but I think he's stuck there. He can't tell Savvidis "sorry mate, your super signings aren't that great". Not that they're terrible players or won't come good, but in today's game you play Campos and Biseswar all the way. This was always going to be a game where you need more brawn than finesse and Campos is better than Vieirinha at that. He can take the kicks. Add to that a Lucescu who is instinctively defensive and a squad that's still a bit all over the place and this result is far from surprising. Disappointing yes, but not surprising. Get a new manager at the end of the season if someone better than Lucescu is available, but for now, I see no point in getting rid of him.

The time is right for Pelkas to get a call up. He's finally beginning to playing with some maturity. I'd be surprised if he gets any playing time against Croatia but he should definitely be a part of our next NT campaign.

If Lucescu plays with two in the middle you'd have to assume Lucescu plays Cimirot and Shakhov. I don't know what is going on with Canas this season. The other thing to consider is that when we played AEK in Athens last season they mauled us in the midfield. This scared Ivic enough that in the Cup Final we went with 3 in the middle (Canas, Cimirot, Shakhov) and played without a number 10. It will be interesting to see how Lucescu lines the team up. As for AEK, Mantalos is a big loss. They will also alter their line up as they've just lost their captain and probably most versatile player for at least 6 months.

It's almost November and the B Ethniki still has not started. Crazy. Ridiculous.

No idea why that goal was disallowed. Watched it a few times and looked fine to me.

Because their fans are animals. Big generalization slandering an entire people I know ... but hey it is what it is. We can only sumrise that their FA is concerned there could be trouble that could cause them to lose points. It's logical of them to play it safe.

@La Mendel honestly, from a neutral perspective reading your post on how few of our players get game time, it would be a major upset (and failure) if Croatia didn't qualify.

At the beginning of the season, realistically, you would've penned this game down for a loss. So in a sense, the result is not that disappointing. If anything the 3 away draws to mediocre teams were much worse results. I was more disappointed with those. What is disappointing though is that this Olympiakos team is there for the taking. They are definitely not the Olympiakos of a few seasons ago. It would've been good to at least get a draw, which I believe was Lucescu's priority. Having said that our defence seems to be solid this season. Yes it's ironic that I'm saying that given we lost but if you look at their goal it was a nothing goal and other than that what chances did they create ? Vieirinha and El Khadouri need to get fit. They aren't for 90 minutes. Mak has been poor, very poor. They all deserve a spell on the bench. I'm surprised to find myself saying we could've used a fit and in form Campos in this game. Heck, even Henrique off the bench could've made the difference. I still don't get why we loaned him out. He would've run onto the pitch in a game like this like he'd just snorted a bunch of cocaine. In the end it was predictable that it was going to be a dour game with few chances. It's not the end of the world. If we are within 3 or 4 points of the top at the winter break we'll be in a good position to challenge. In the second half of the season we'll have Olympiakos, AEK, Panionios, Xanthi in Toumba (with fans) but anyway let's see how we go in the away games first.

Oh God ... Matos ha ha. Yeah he'll need to keep his composure and keep those elbows out of people's faces.

Add to that Xanthi away, which is always a tough game, and PAO at home who regardless of their financial issues will always give us a tough game. All in all it's going to be very interesting between now and the winter break.

I'll take a draw for this game. Curious to see how we play. Last season we took the game to them in Athens. We lost but we played well and didn't just sit 10 players behind the ball. Do any sports bet sites take bets on Fortounis getting a penalty after the 80th minute ? The fixtures coming up will show us where the team is at. So far it's been easy games. Olympiakos, AEK, Panionios away in the next 5 rounds.

Re maik! Ha ha ausgreek you made me laugh.

i think Prijovic will start due to the fact that he also helps a lot defensively with his height.

Really ? What's that about ?

Prijovic is our only real striker. There was talk earlier in the year that Mak could be used as a backup striker but he isn't that sort of a player. All a team has to do to stop Mak is play deep and without space to run into a big part of his game is nullified. Koulouris and Klaus (when we had him) are/were both average at best. With Prijovic the opposition *have* to play their best defender on him. With Koulouris or Klaus quality strikers you can play your second, third or fourth best defender and you'll probably be all right. No offence to them of course, I know they give it their best. But with Prijovic you have to watch him. His aerial presence alone is something we've missed for years. I've always looked at our squad and thought "if Olympiakos could have any of our players who would they want ?". In seasons past I could maybe pick 2, 3 or 4 players at best. But now we have Rey, Matos, Zambrano, Mauricio, Vieirinha, El Khadouri, Mak, Prijovic. The squad is looking strong and any talk of selling should be dismissed. Trust me without Prijovic we don't win a title. Add to that list very competent players on their day like Crespo (Yiankos's koumbaro), Varela, Canas, Biseswar, Pelkas, Shakhov, Campos and all of a sudden the squad is potentially challenging for the title. Really challenging or at least they should be. Some of these players can be hot and cold with their form so if they can stay in form it could make the difference. Speaking of Pelkas he finally seems to have woken up and started playing some decent football. He just needs to stop getting silly yellow cards. I really think he should be with the NT if we manage to qualify for The WC.

Prijovic was a bargain. I don't think he's that easy to replace. Considering we haven't won the league since 1985, the club should concentrate on that first and monies later! If it were up to me, I wouldn't even sell him for 15 million at this stage, considering there are lots of players out there worth much more than Prijovic (on paper) that you don't know if they will be even half as good.

Since when have we ever sold a player for their buyout clause value ? It's always less. If anything it gives clubs a figure from which to negotiate down. Better off just not having a buyout clause.

What I want is for both Biseswar and El Khaddouri to be playing. Biseswar as the 10 and El Khaddouri as the 8. Seriously, with half the teams in the league you only need one DM. In theory Mauricio is the man (at least we're paying him enough for him to brag about it) but we'll see how he goes.

Ha ha ha, intruder alert!

Being a pessimist PAOK supporter, I'm still finding it hard to believe this could even be a possibility but it sounds like it could really happen. I saw the pics on sport24.gr and they look pretty cool. Ante na doume. As far as the stadium is concerned, who will it belong to and who is paying for it ?

According to http://inpaok.com/386346/πλησιάζει-τα-100-εκ-η-επένδυση-του-ιβάν/ Savvidis has put in around 100 million into the club. Just asking, but on what exactly ?!?! There was the 10 million that was owed to the government. I assume when he came to the club there were some other outstanding debts so we'll call that say another 5 to 10 million. Toumba got upgraded so I'll add another say 5 million there. We're at around 25 million. I figure each year we need a top up of around 5 or so million as the revenue generated by the club probably doesn't meet the expenses, although this year it'll be more because player wages have increased significantly and revenue has dropped due to games without fans and the early exit from the EL. Any ideas people ? Also, what if Savvidis wanted to leave the club one day (not that he would). How would that work ?

Good time to invest in shares of gun companies. Apparently sales increase as people become worried gun controls might be introduced. Crazy world we live in. Crazy yanks.