Rockafeller Skank

We can hope that Pjanic will be tired from nonstop training for the Chamions League Final in 2 days. Might be a emotional blow for him if Juve loses.

a 4-3-3 on paper does not sound bad to me for keeping a draw. Who knows, Tziolis might actualy surprise us. Siopis has been good not one, but two seasons, for Panionios. ask everyone who follows GSL throughoutly.

I honestly doubt it. I am afraid though that Skibbe has made his mind until Siopis plays in international level to prove his worth against better teams (maybe he ll start if he takes playing time with Olympiakos at the Champions League qualifiers.

Call Ups announced. Would prefer Siovas over Koutroubis and maybe some fresh blood Manthatis instead of Bakasetas, but he probably was the last decision of Skibbe since he played well in the playoffs. Nothing extreme, nothing wow. With Samaris,Kyriakos,Tzavellas,Tachtsidis, Karelis,Blondie of Paok missing, Lykogiannis,Donis,Kourbelis, Retsos, Gianniotis are "new entries"

~~~~~~~~~~~~~Karnezis~~~~~~~~~~ ~Torosidis~Manolas~~Sokratis~Stafylidis~ ~~~Retsos~~~~Kourbelis~~~~Siopis~~~ ~~~~~Mantalos~~~~~~~Fortounis~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~Mitroglou~~~~~~~~~~~~ I would rather see a midfield completly new-entries based than see a Maniatis and Portuguese more skilled Maniatis midfield. Bosnians have many losses toο in defence, with their only worth-a-mention defender (since Spahic retired) Kolasinac. No proper fullback as Vranjes will be used there and Lulic, a winger, on the Left Flank. I honestly hope we can score at least once to that defence. If not we are not worthy to go to the World Cup. Strategically speaking though if we can keep the 0 on the back I will take a 0-0 as we re already in front and could actually manage a pretty strange draw to Belgium in Athens as well. If Skibbe prefers to keep the team used to the 4-2-3-1 he uses I expect at least one of theyoungsters mentioned above to start at the midfield as well. Possible wingers (with our so out of form Bakasetas who even himself doesn't know which his true position is and Diamantakos Mr Relegated team from Bundesliga 2 probaby both not gonna receive a call up) I would expect to be seen are in order preferance Donis(can apparently play left wing and that was his main position last year)Christodoulopoulos,Pelkas. I also would like Masouras Panionios Winger step up his game because he scored 6 goals in total this year, 5 of them vs Play off teams, which seems kind of odd but yet satisfying to figure.

I doubt both of them do. Probably Maniatis has a 80% chance to be there.

I believe Lulic is equally bad at defending, just better positioning. I honestly don't know. Hopefully a new face like Donis of Nice or Pelkas of PAOK. Anyone who was used there apart from our Left Back Stafylidis(who played Left midfielder when Tzavellas was available but now Tzave got an insta red) was very poor so I would really rather see a new person or no wingers/flankers at all.

I am not trying to downgrade Kolasinac at all. I am a fifa fan and I actually have him in my bundesliga team every year since 2015, coz alaba aint worth so much money collecting. What I tried to imply is that your defenders, at least in my humble opinion, are very poor as a total, and we wont pressure much for a goal either. I believe the biggest difficulty for a Bosnian fan Is watching Vranjes pretending to play a Right Back. With our midfield so undergraded, I expect Skibbe to stack it with players to not let you dominate it.

your team plays a 4-4-2 so a winger missing is hardly a big concern. Also, even your best defender (after Spahic in his prime) Kolasinac. as a defender isn't very good, so your defense should be considered poor with or without the players. Lulic as a LB is far better than Milicevic or Pavlovic. I think the fact that we have no A or B choice midfielders available in Samari, Tachtsidis, Papadopoulos, and only youth has been left, makes me worry more.

Siopis - Kourbelis - Retsos time to shine. If they can prove us in this match then they can bring a little bit of hope.

No because noone has actually seen him play any important match. Playing vs B - C Ethniki at the cup can't really help to form an opinion. As I said earlier however. I doubt many of our newcommers in De La Bella , Brazilian CB youth whose name I can';t remember, Cardozo, Figueiras even Marin did anything useful to the team If Retsos, Manthatis, Bouchalakis, Giannitas, Goutas , Ben from Panionios, Maniatis, Laifis remained in the team even as B chohices, instead of half of this year's signings, how worse could this season be? Barely winning the championsip by 3. Getting knocked out from the easiest top 4 team in the cup, Finishing 2nd in the Groupstage to Cyprus champion who actually progressed through Bilbao. How worse would this season be? Worst case scenario - we wouldn't qualify from Osmanlispor, but so what? Red SHeriff said I am wrong in this one but honestly, these 10 mill Oly spent this transfer window, could be saved to be doubled for next season and have a bigger impact.

I think Stafylidis will make it big.

Our defence. With Either Stafylidis or Holebas as LWB with this Offensive duo of Mitroglou - Fortounis(talking about Fortounis of NT who obviously is much more interested than the one in Olympiakos lately- and I do not blame him), are honestly some of the best people we ve produced. Midfield is a problem. This team with some young Katsouranis/Karagounis would actually be a top 10 national team no matter who else took part in it. Problem is that the team has a number of very decent top tier players, but 90% of them are defensive based. We need the key chain to unite this good defense with a good offense ending up in giving results but also an image of a team dominating some periods of time. We were shakey vs Bosnia vs Estonia vs Belgium, even vs Cyprus. Not to mention friendly vs Belarus. Even vs Australia. When the team is able to stand up to its feet in game, then will I agree we ve got a very decent team that can go furthen than Group stage of an upcomming WC or Euro. And as long as we surrender the midfield to every opposition, from pot 10 to pot 1 team, we won't see such a feature in the NT.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_FIFA_World_Cup_qualification_–_UEFA_Group_H Guys, I was checking the goal differences of us and Bosnia but something else caught my eye. Can you take a look at the discipline area? It doesn't mention Kyriakos Papadopoulos being inelidgible for the match vs Bosnia. Are we sure the instant red gives a 3 match suspension?

Good for him. Bad for Olympiakos.

http://www.sport-fm.gr/article/podosfairo/nea-proswpa-lukogiannis-kai-t-dwnis-stin-ethniki/3360397 according to sport fm babis and dwnis have already received a call up.

Sadly noone will acknowledge a centerback as being elite, if he is not Spanish or German.

Surprises not, but we ll see new members due to suspensions. Tzavellas,Tachtsidis,Samaris,Papadopoulos are 4 players who were called in each camaign so far. 4 out of 23 I believe? Karelis injured means 5 out of 23 usual suspects. That's a quite big portion of the team. I honestly hope every suspended can/does at least attend to the training, so that the chemistry, which currently is on point, remains that way.

I honestly believe youngster Donis deserves a call up at least to be inspected from the specialists and Skibbe. With Karelis injured Diamantakos being terrible and unable to play on the wing , as well as a very bad season in Bundes. 2 Bakasetas minimum playtime in AEK and 0 contribution in all his starts for the National team. I honestly think we can expect one of the Donis, Kolovos, Pelkas to be called. Kolovos had a good season but he was still injured in February and he still hasn't returned. So calling him for a match 15 days from now seems almost impossible in such an important match, where our offence can secure firstspot. Pelkas is active for Paok whole season, especially since Rodriguez left, but Skibbe does not seem to rate him. Especially with his latest upgraded playtime (after Nice secured 3rd spot and mathematically could not go higher), I think he might be an option that could give Mitroglou some breath.

When are the call ups announced? All our internationals don't play competitive anymore. All Olympiakos greeks as well. Maybe the management is waiting for the Sunday Play off matches to conclude his callups?

K. Pap could be useful in the midfield as a CDM since Samaris is missing. Taxi also missing really leaves us with all our B options. Problem is that all of our B options havent been tested. In my opinion, we might be surprised. So will Bosnians. Plus , the element of surprise as to "who will play in the midfield with all their mids banned" might actually work for us. I am not aware if players who have no more club duties could join the team earlier, to start planning for the upcomming match. Bosnian midfield has much less influence. It is mostly Dzeko and Ibisevic positioning that makes Bosnia a threat. If Dzeko doesn't play, Ibisevic is quite managable at this age. Moreover Kolasinac, another very talented Fullback-Wingerback-Left Midfielder, the only player who could have a problem if he got booked vs Gibraltar, actually got booked. They don't have many options. I think we can, and we will, get a draw there. Winning is also possible. If we make them sleep like we did with the Red Devils. Their defence is nonexistent on paper.

He gave an audition for Xionati and the 7 dwarves. Phil met him there.

this isn't a match you change the schemes and experiment. It's the match that probably gonna give 2nd place. Win for us probably means we can push for even first place. Draw means that without any unexpected troubles, 2nd place should be ours. Defeat means we need help from Cyprus and Belgium (and means we need them both to take results vs Bosnia). Everyone was talking about Belgium match being the most important one, but with things being as they are right now, July will be the month we either make it to the play offs, or we don't. So I wouldn't put a new starting scheme , nor would I put some new players like Siovas, who's been away form the NT since 2014. Moreover Torosidis wingback in this age? Get real. He was a wingback till his 30, he was fast and could honestly keep the whole flank, but right now, this player needs fewer duties than a whole flank for himself.

It's the total outcome of the cooperation of LB-LW/LM what skibbe probably takes into cooperation. Also the fact that Staf is a wingerback helps in our defensive mechanism-which is the reason we still have chances to qualify, than having a proper winger play there. Tzavellas-Stafylidis works. Maybe Skibbe tries to see if Lykogiannis-Stafylidis works as well. That is what Im trying to say.

impossible to happen. comes from an injury. a new add on to the squad that has had 0 playtime lately, seems kinda impossible. we have players for there. I believe Lazaros Christodoulopoulos has more chances getting picked than anyone else.