georgelaz

WEIRD starting 11. koutris as a cb who's a 5'8 lb and masouras who's a winger/striker at rb? mavrias who's a rb/rm as cb too. wtf we have amazing cbs and he doesnt even start?! shame if we had no cb's available he should've just put kourbelis and samaris at cb who can play there

I don't think that Turkey is a good friendly idea. Because of the history and politics etc. it's not a good reflection of where our team is at. IE the last friendly with them we were playing not too lose and just did 5 atb so they wouldn't score at all costs. I guess an exercise for our defensive muscle but no. I think a smarter friendly would be between a very good side ie) France, Belgium, Netherlands or a smaller side with a more professional FA like Northern Ireland, Wales, Czech Republic playing a rival international derby is just unnecessary stress Northern Ireland would be good because they're a mix of english 1st and 2nd division players. Probably the best run league in the world.

Mavropanos barely starts for Arsenal this season and the few games he has arsenal ate so many goals. Retsos has been out as much as Kpaps this season. I'd personally like Retsos to be our RB to just make it sturdy. His crossing and ability going forward is suspect. He's very conservative defensive winger. Kinda reminds me of Vyntra but with way more potential. Siovas you can make an argument for and he's the only one of the 6 that has long ball playing abilities. He also is uniquely left footed and as the great prophet elphantos says he's the one with the most brains of the 6 (possibly Retsos does too but haven't seen enough of him and he's not as robust.)

kpaps is our 3rd best CB when he's in form had potential to be world class earlier in his career.

It depends on injuries / tactics / players chosen to start. if we play our best line up on paper I think we are 2nd best team to italy. if bakasetas is starting if round though and sit back to absorb attack we might be in trouble.

yup bosnia might've messed up their whole qualifiers because Pjanic is out for a game or two? Finland being a threat baffles me but I guess they have a good team this round. Nations league is kinda a joke tourny though so might've just gotten lucky. Ronaldo didn't even play for portugal for it.

I think you only need to finish second to qualify so shouldn't be too hard but we also struggled against Bosnia and Finland past 2 years so who knows.

I like Masouras but I'm not sold on Kolovos. I think he just got lucky on that goal. No one marked him because he's not usually much of a threat. There's a reason why Masouaras is now a starter at Oly right away where as Kolovos could never crack the line up over several years as a starter. I'd rather Donis on the wing with Masouras and Mitroglou striker or Koulouris.

I'm nervous he's gunna lose his form because paok is gunna swoop him next season. Sink or swim. Much like how we lost the 2013 mitroglou to fulham. arguably though Mitroglou got back his form at Benfica

bicycle kicks for days. he has a nice snap shot that can be honed from outside the box. remember that snapshot volley for the NT in nations league?

I don't want him to leave Atromitos yet to be honest. It's always a risk to move someone fast right when they hit peak form. Maybe have a good season with PAOK now that Prijo is gone too with better team mates around creating for him.

koulouris has excellent long range shooting and he actually does track back to create too.

he's never gotten a proper 90. probably if you combine all those appearances it's like 60 minutes total. maybe less. they put him on like last 5 minutes of the game if I recall correctly.

I've always been an advocate of Mitroglou and Fortounis being our best in their respective positions even when they're out of form. I'm referring to Koulouris should've been the striker not Donis vs. Bosnia since Mitro was out.

koulouris 23 goals in 31 appearances... how many tap ins can he really have at atromitos. also scored against oly last weekend cisse put up those kind of numbers and got called up for france. surely koulouris should get a 90 with this kind of form.

I wouldn't describe Estonia as a minnow to be nitpicky. they're more on par with Cyprus. They have a few very quality players like Klavan who was an important player for Liverpool. Minnows to me are countries that even people who know geography don't know exist like Gilbratar, Faroe Islands, Leichenstein etc.

tachtsidis is a good long passer through balls. tzavellas actually in his prime might've been our best FK taker post euro. Lazaros is good at them with power and Fortounis has more precision but less power. ninis's golden zone was so long ago that I can barely remember his free kicks.

most similar player to Samaras I think of now is Arnautovic (just Samaras was more cool headed) LM/ST combo very tall 6'4 but plays like a smaller flair player

I got into NT during euro 2004. the actual tourny. I somehow just started watching the group stages. very unsual. So I never got to see him in action while he was going at it in his prime. It does seem like he was a class above but we still have some creative players is all I'm saying.

how do you define creative option... we've always had creative options. obviously tsiartas was very high level but I'd argue Fortounis, Samaras, Karagounis, Mantalos, Fetfatzidis, Ninis, Galanopoulos just to name a few all have some degree of flair to their game.

they're 3 best players are very good = dzeko, pjanic, visca but our 3 best players are equally as good = manolas, sokratis, mitroglou/fortounis and then the rest of our squad is above average whereas the rest of their squad is pretty bad and a lot of players who struggle to even start for a top 4 greek superleague side (ie cimerot was squad player in greece but a starter for bosnia) the reason why bosnia is always edged is human laziness because it's easier to see attacking stats over defensive. whenever people think of the best players they think ronaldo, messi etc. not ramos or van dijk their defense is much weaker compared to ours though so even though dzeko is better then mitroglou their like of talent on that level makes them easy to score against. eg) how cyprus came back from 2-0 down to win. still a long road to go but I think bosnia basically shot themselves in the foot with this game. when greece builds momentum, belief we're super hard to beat. now we have them in greece at home and we'll likely have manolas, torosidis back. if we're playing well too the stadium might be packed like vs. romania

durmisaj over koulouris? koulouris has to be way better he just hasn't been given minutes for NT that's another misleading thing about NT stats. most players first 20 apperances are only like 5-10 minutes lol

it seems that he was fatigued by 70th and that's when he started giving balls away. mental fatigue is a thing too and being one of the only creative outlets he had to think for 10 people.

probably a bad idea but I wonder if Zeca as a RB would be good. He's a decent crosser,defender and engine. Kourbelis and Samaris when in form are good cm's too. (at least until toro/retsos are back) I don't think bakakis is that bad though, I think he just had a bad game. He' shares a lot of the qualities that Zeca has. could be something like this mitroglou donis fortounis masouras kourbelis samaris koutris sokratis manolas zeca odyesseas

good point. has a strange starting 11 ever been effective? only one I can think of that got us a draw was vs. turkey 0-0 where samaris and mitroglou were our only attacking players (samaris is not even a pure attacker). we played really bad but succeeded in shutting them down.