georgelaz

it's all good man. It's not just the Greeks who are surprised who aren't in. All of Europe is surprised. That signals that we should rise again. Bad campaigns happen to everyone sooner or later.

agreed. 3 of tachtsidis, fortounis, ninis/pelkas/mantalos should be sufficient to feed. + Samaris, Torosidis, Holebas are decent contributors too. Kone tried to play more of feeder to Mitroglou and it was not very convincing. (I think in the Luxenbourg game?)

yeah you're probably right. I was kinda feeling Ninis & Pelkas over him to feed the Mitro, though.

Hopefully 2016 we can start calling him Mitrogod.

Dude i'm aware. I wasn't talking about Ranieri in that particular post.. I'm saying that all the players who were key in World Cup 2014 were on their last legs and/or not present at the same level during the WHOLE campaign. Which alludes the problem was beyond just the coach. DUH! You basically created a straw man argument. Probably inadvertently, but look it up. 'A straw man is a common form of argument and is an informal fallacy based on giving the impression of refuting an opponent's argument, while actually refuting an argument which was not advanced by that opponent'

I'm a big fan of Mitroglou so it'll take a lot to convince me that any other of our strikers are better. We should have started Velios in the Luxenbourg game. That was a mistake. Mitroglou should've score a goal or two against Costa Rica. Navas was in god mode. The saves were a matter of inches and I think many people would be vouching for Mitro had he buried them. Also, no one really scored for Greece the past 2 years. So that crumbles that point lol. But yo, I like your posts GrkCdn. You're often contrarian, and you say your piece and make good points, regardless if it gets people worked up. Min ksexnate, oli eimaste ellines edw ;)

I like Kone. If we have every player performing at their best level though, I think he'd be ranked as a first line bench option. 33% starting 66% off the bench. We have slightly better quality in Fortounis as an AM IMO. Kone is kinda similar player to Karagounis from what I've seen. He's a scoring threat, but we can't rely on him for goals as a striker. It's just bonus. But when he scores, like Karagounis, it's spectacular. Kone with bicycle kicks, flicks, headers. Karagounis mostly with outside box shots. Most of the times Kone has looked really good is because the rest of our team has been so poor. Eg) Colombia game. Exception Hungary Game 4-3. Everyone except our defense looked great.

Salpingidis, Samaras, Karagounis, Katsouranis, Maniatis were all important during our world cup campaign. All missing from action in our new campaign. That's 5/11 of our regulars gone. + we didn't have the best of luck with injuries. I'm still extremely optimistic for the world cup campaign. This euro campaign will probably give our players emotionally fuel and a chip on the shoulder to stamp the Ethiniki back into the top 15. I really like our top players. Sokratis, Manolas, Samaris, Mitroglou, Karnezis, Fortounis in particular. The Bosnia vs. Greece match will be epic. Manolas & Pjanic already have bad blood at the club level. Let's see if Manolas can nullify him, it's not beyond him.

Mitroglou with a midfield Fortounis, Tachtsidis, Pelkas, Ninis/Mantalos will score probably every other game. Not playing Mitroglou is like saying you don't want to use a shotgun because it doesn't come with ammo. The attacking mids are the ammo. He's not pistolero for nothing.

I have a hunch Olympiakos will have a good Europa league run. To miss the knockouts in CL so narrowly, the EL is like a second chance. Olympiakos is even the type of team dare I say to win the whole shebang. (It would be remarkable, but not beyond Oly.

yes/no I'm more with 1789's vision of where our NT should be we have different players now with different strengths. We can't cling to the past The only real 'tinkering' for us to find success again is to utilize attacking mids (eg) Fortounis), rather than scrape the bottom of the barrel to try to find wingers (our wingers are OKAY but they aren't the caliber of the rest of our NT and just drags down the caliber of the rest of the team.

Anderlecht vs. Olympiakos is a very even match. I fancy Oly; Oly's got a swagger this year.

^ all the more proof that it's our midfield that needs work. Before, we mainly relied on Samaras, who's a quasi Striker / Midfielder that can create chances from nothing. Mitroglou is a overall better striker, but needs attacking mids to be effective, which Benfica has and Greece does too (but barely played in proper combos)

There's something magical going on at Leicester. I think the team chemistry as a collective unit is the secret.

agreed. I think Sokratis will be how John Terry is for England. Pretty much on top of his game at 35. he's a very robust defender. Kalamata pride :)

I only watched the highlights but statistically it looked like Olympiakos came to play. 50-50 possession. equal shots on target. Olympiakos could've popped in a few goals from the highlights. Indiye, Siovas, Fortounis all almost got a goal. Olympiakos also got more shots off in total than the Gunners. unfortunately, Arsenal proved to be more clinical.

Olympiakos has been improving their champions league game year by year. Arsenal & Bayern are very difficult teams to top off. If we were in Group H, C, or G the chance to qualify would be greater. Right now, Olympiakos is just a very strong group stage team. Anything above that is punching above our weight.

haven't seen oikonomou play, but Siovas did almost score a goal from a nice header.

i called this from the beggining. Arsenal was getting too much momentum. A few lucky bounces Olympiakos could've went through this game, styll. Arsenal is one of the best teams in the world. They are beatable, compared to Barcelona but they are a powerful team, the better team won today. At least it was Giroud scored the goals, he's so handsome lol.

the goal cushion olympiakos has makes this a relatively even match in terms of the group. could go either way. hopefully for oly arsenal beat bayern 2-0, which is alarming

I disagree, Oly outplayed Asteras big time. i agree that if that penalty wasn't awarded though, it might've been a different game. 0-0 or maybe even a late break for asteras but even if Asteras won, oly was dominating the match

why was there no fans for the game anyways? i didn't see how the penalty was awarded but I saw all the goals. (was at the gym while watching) it looked inevitable that olympiakos would break the score. they're simply at a significantly higher level than then the other superleague teams, even if most calls were made against them, I think they'd still dominate aek pao or paok (maybe not paok cause of savvidis?) probably couldn't afford olympiakos's current lineup if they tried

You're not seeing the analogy properly. I'm not comparing Germany to Pao. That would be stupid. I'm comparing a team who on paper should win, losing to a team that on paper, wasn't predicted to win. Not sure if you're doing that on purpose to win the argument but you're twisting the analogy in a way that it wasn't supposed to be perceived and used. Not sure which games you were watching, but iraklis did not outplay pao. they got the win of course, but outplaying is very generous statement, unless your definition is outplaying is simply getting the win. I think Pao were slightly unlucky to not get the win, but Iraklis weren't massively outclassed either, they played OK. I think PAOK & Pao will catch up and go a little higher than the current table. We aren't even half way through the season, a lot can happen. Panionios is probably punching above their weight right now, don't think it can be sustained all season. Aek is doing well as i predicted before the season start. i predicted they'd finish 3rd.

fortounis with a nice penalty kick and outside box goal (I think?) against asteras. I would rather Asteras have won, but atleast it was Fortounis who got the goals.

still 4th place to iraklis's 11th. Germany lost to Ireland too, can't say that Ireland knows more about the game than Germany because of one game. In a season sometimes you drop points to on paper weaker sides, that's why the game is played. I'm pretty confident pao will finish either 2nd or 3rd this season in the end.