PAOK in Europe 2017-2018

[Blackhawk]

And they have Papagiannopoulos who will want some revenge for being cut from PAOK.

[kozi]

Fair chance we'll be the only Greek club to win their playoff tie. 

Edited August 4, 2017 by kozi

[Antaeus7]

Good draw, but as Dutch Eagle says, this won't be easy. 

[Dutch Eagle]

3 minutes ago, kozi said:

Fair chance we'll be the only Greek club participating in the group stages of either comp this season. 

Oly will be in GS too. If they win in CL. If the lose in EL.

[kozi]

Just now, Dutch Eagle said:

Oly will be in GS too. If they win in CL. If the lose in EL.

True... Beat me to it

[Dutch Eagle]

Just realised that this is the first time we have an opponent from Sweden in European comeptitions. Pity that I will be back in The Netherlands when we play them in Toumba.

[Yiankos]

Καλή κλήρωση. Μικρή ομάδα, αλλά απέκλεισε την Γαλατά και το πρωτάθλημα είναι σε εξέλιξη, οπότε οι δικοί μας θα αναγκαστούν να προετοιμαστούν σοβαρά για να περάσουν χωρίς όμως να έχουν και το φόβο ότι δεν θα τα καταφέρουν.

[Blackhawk]

We should really not have any problems eliminating this team. They are a semi-professional team at best. Galata decided to take them lightly and paid for it. All PAOK has to do in the first game at Toumba come out, score 3 goals, and then go and make it an easy afternoon in Sweden. Let's not forget that there will also be a Superleague game in between the two games with them.

[pash]

Let's not forget - this nearly happened to Tudor in the EL with us, vs that Belorussian team. Fortunately then, as now, we had Mak for the home games. Potential future employers should perhaps consider his tendency to not prepare sufficiently for easy away games.

 

Regardless, I'm just as confident we'll make the group stage as I was that we'd beat Olimpik. We've got two more weeks of training, two more weeks to get our mojo back. For the first game, we'll be completely fresh and should have every important player available. We've got this.

[Bananas]

Could not have asked for a better draw.  The gods have been kind to us this season.

[italosPAOK4]

first time we play a swedish team in our european history. let's make it to the groups and make happy all of our fans and those in stockholm that have their PAOK fan club!

[Yiankos]

21 hours ago, Blackhawk said:

We should really not have any problems eliminating this team. They are a semi-professional team at best. Galata decided to take them lightly and paid for it. All PAOK has to do in the first game at Toumba come out, score 3 goals, and then go and make it an easy afternoon in Sweden. Let's not forget that there will also be a Superleague game in between the two games with them.

Exactly, and that's exactly why we need a full squad of players that can jump in and substitute the "starters" at any given point.

[pash]

I agree, assuming the coach uses them. He's made the right noises about that (it's practically criminal that Cimirot was playing at the end of last season; he was a walking corpse)...we just have to see if Stanojevic will make good on that promise. Personally I'm doubtful; the vast majority of coaches settle on 13 or 14 players and will only alternate when a disaster has struck.

[Yiankos]

In total we will have two full months (maybe more) where we will be having three matches per week. If Vieirinha comes we will have a plethora of choices on the wings and I would love that. Djalma, Mak, Enrique, Vieirinha. So, even if someone is injured (Djalma did a couple times last year) and as you are saying Vieirinha might be also prone, then we will still have decent choices to play against a very important Europa League game, a derby in the League, or a Cup game closer to the final stages. If we progress to the 32 of the Europa League (hopefully we will) then we will be again having a total of 60 games for the season. It's crucial to have choices in the defense and the defensive midfielders as well. As you and Christo (and everyone) is saying, those two positions are our priority. And is not ideal for the players to be burned. Cimirot is a good player, so does Shakhov, but they cannot have a repeat of the previous year where they died somewhere before the end.

[Yiankos]

Christo I think it's time for you to open the topic against the Swedish team... PAOKARAAAAA!

[pash]

Zenit lost away vs Utrecht, 1-0...that's a very good result for us. We need a handful of upsets to get into pot 1 for the group stage (which at this point is still unlikely, but one can hope).

[pash]

Just put together an overly long list of every team that's in (or likely to be) the EL group stage, with some coefficient data. I listed it out in excel and added to drop box; if anyone wants a link to the file let me know. I'll put the most relevant part below:

 

Teams ahead of PAOK (coefficient points):

10 seeded teams from the playoffs (assuming all win their matches)

4 direct entrants to the champions league (that have more coefficient points than us)

1 CL play off loser (one of sporting or steaua, who are playing each other and are both ranked above us)

Total: 15 teams

 

Games to watch:

Fenerbahce vs Vardar - Fenerbahce lost the away fixture 2-0, Vardar has ~5 points

Zenit vs Utrecht - Zenit lost away fixture 1-0, Utrecht has ~6 points

Dynamo Kyiev vs Maritimo - Dynamo drew away fixture

Rosenborg vs Ajax - Ajax lost at home

Bilbao vs PAO - Bilbao won 2-3 away, almost guaranteed to go through

AEK vs Club Brugge - AEK drew away vs Brugge, needs to win at home

Braga vs Hafnarfjordur - Braga won 1-2 away, should go through

 

Assuming my count is right, that means we need three upsets out of all of the EL play off games that will happen; above I've listed seven games that may be trending that way (with PAO and the Braga games being very unlikely to go our way).

 

-edit- I should note that the point of this is to see if we can make it into pot 1, assuming that wasn't already obvious

Edited August 18, 2017 by pash

[kozi]

Need 4 of those to go down assuming no major upsets in UCL playoffs... Very unlikely but you never know 

[Yiankos]

If that happens will be amazing.

However we proved that we are doing well against the BIG team of our group (Dortmund - Fiorentina - Tottenham). So, maybe for the weird team called PAOK, a group against three not very well known teams will bring complacency and opposite results...

[Dutch Eagle]

Things got more complicated as Copenhagen was kicked out of CL by Qarabag, and were "relegated" to EL. We need 5 upsets now to go to pot 1, assuming we qualify (no doubts for me, though). I think we should stop "dreaming" of pot 1 from now as 4 was already very unlikely, as @kozi mentioned before.

[Athens4]

No need to worry about which pot we will be in. We can worry about that next year again when we are assured of getting players "if we get through to the group stages".

[BostonThanatos]

Change the title to PAOK OUT of Europe 2017

[Yiankos]

Five years ago was Rapid Wien, two and a half years ago was Guingamp, today is Estersud. I guess, s%$#! happen to every team. Like Ajax who reached the final and a few months later was eliminated by Rosenborg. Deep inside though my problem is that we don't build anything. We don't see any plan going on those five years and obviously those skype things are not working. Whatever we succeeded or failed comes back to Savvidis. I still feel this kind of leadership doesn't work for PAOK. We need someone who is in Thessaloniki. Who is there for the team. Even with the money that he gives we could have a better team. The months pass by and we are waiting for him to come next week to decide about this or that. Those things cannot happen. And after a few losses he changes everyone over and over again. The problem is himself. He has proven he has no idea about football and he has proven he has no idea how to find someone, put him in charge, and stick with the plan.

[Nea Bafra]

On 25/08/2017 at 11:17 AM, Yiankos said:

Five years ago was Rapid Wien, two and a half years ago was Guingamp, today is Estersud. I guess, s%$#! happen to every team. Like Ajax who reached the final and a few months later was eliminated by Rosenborg. Deep inside though my problem is that we don't build anything. We don't see any plan going on those five years and obviously those skype things are not working. Whatever we succeeded or failed comes back to Savvidis. I still feel this kind of leadership doesn't work for PAOK. We need someone who is in Thessaloniki. Who is there for the team. Even with the money that he gives we could have a better team. The months pass by and we are waiting for him to come next week to decide about this or that. Those things cannot happen. And after a few losses he changes everyone over and over again. The problem is himself. He has proven he has no idea about football and he has proven he has no idea how to find someone, put him in charge, and stick with the plan.

i half agree with you yiakos, but sovvidis doesn't kick, chase, pass or shoot the ball. at some point professional pride needs to come into this

[PAOKSYD]

Today im trying to be positive and saying this might be a blessing as now the players can put their full energy into winning this league that we so desperately want to win. 

I was also analyzing the signings we made 3 years ago, 4 years ago, 5 years ago etc and back then we were excited if a players value was 1m on transfermarket now we dont touch players under 3m our player budget is the biggest in our history. 

Also i see to agree with lucescou our players lack fitness and after the 70th minute were running on an empty tank, so hopefully in the next 2 weeks this can be improved.