Thrasyvoulos’s Three Goals

AEK’s three first half goals did not go unanswered for long.  It took just 31 minutes of the second half for Thrasyvoulos to pull even.  Yes, it is almost unimaginable that a team of AEK’s supposed caliber would concede three goals in half an hour to a team holding onto the bottom of the table by its fingernails.  Originally, I wanted to just discuss the three goals in this post and return to AEK’s defensive and tactical failings in later posts, but as I started to write the second half review of Thrasyvoulos’s goals, I realized it was impossible to separate out a discussion of our own failings (this is particularly true when you realize that two of their goals were off set pieces that resulted from sloppy fouls). 

Thrasyvoulos’s first goal came in the first five minutes of the half.  Alexopoulos committed a sloppy foul at the edge of our box, resulting in the free kick.  Now, in my earlier post on AEK’s three goals I commented on how one of our goal (Blanco’spenalty kick) was the result of a call that one could take issue with.  Officiating a professional football match is part science, part art.  The “part art” part allows some referees to put their own stamp on the game.  Some allow for some rough play as long as they perceive the advantage playing out properly.  Some stop the game so often that it surely interrupts the tactics of both teams.  The ref in Sunday’s game, in awarding AEK its penalty kick in the first half, clearly signalled that he would not tolerate clumsy challenges from behind when an opposing player was trying to establish possession in goal scoring range.  Like I said, reasonable minds may differ on this, but it’s clearly within the official’s prerogative to control the match in this fashion.

So it was a bit dissapointing to see Alexopoulos commit nearly the same foul that Thrasyvoulos committed on us.  Aright then 1-3 and lesson learned, right?

Not so fast.  Just minutes later Alexopoulos commited a similar foul from behind, this time just outside the 18 yard box but directly in front of our goal.  The free kick sailed over our wall and the outstretched hands of our keeper.  2-3.

But the first two goals were not entirely the fault of ALexopoulos (though his obtuseness at understanding how the official was controlling the game is a bit worrisome).  Georgeas, though a fan favorite, created a lot of instability in the back.  This is even more worrisome given the fact that Donis has seen fit to make him the co-captain of the team.  He was repeatedly caught in possession and was frequently out of position.

One of the advantages to playing a passing game (as opposed to a long-ball, direct game) is that is allows a team to keep its shape so that when possession changes, it can adapt quickly.  Georgeas, however, seemed to dribble first and pass as a last result.  The problem with this is that he is a defender and there was often no one behind him.  By dribbling he constantly risked being dispossessed (as in the 49th minute in a play that I believe was ultimately responsible for Thrasyvoulos’s first goal since Alexopoulos had to peel off his mark to cover Georgeas’s side, which directly resulted in Alexopuloscolliding with the back side of his opponent) and your last-resort passes are often inaccurate and badly weighted.

Georgeasalso regularly got beat on aerial challenges.  Now, there is no question he was running all over the pitch, and probably playing with more heart than any two other AEK players taken together, but that is not good football, its not good defending and its not a good example from a captain.  AEK needs calm leadership from the back, not erratic runs from a guys trying to do too much by himself.  Also, if Donis’s tactics are to play a possession-style short-passing game (and there was ample evidence of this, particularly from our midfield), how does it make sense for our right-back to hold the ball so long and repeatedly find himself our of position?  Why did Donis make this guy captain?  It would have made a lot more sense to give Majstorivic the armband as he at least added some calm and backbone to a back line that looked leaky and panicky for most of the game.

The second goal, though also a direct result of a sloppy Alexopoulos foul, was more indirectly caused by sloppy passing. This time a poorly weighted back pass in the center of the pitch that was easily picked off for a swift counter-attack.

The pretty football that Doniswants us to play with this passing game is clearly putting too much pressure on our defense.  This is not helped one bit by the fact that we are completely enforcerless in the midfield. Neither Kafes nor Pelleteiri is the hard-tackling anchor we need shielding our defense.

And while AEK may not have the fully-developed, mature defensive midfielder that fans want, we have two options that are surely better at shielding the defense than Kafes or Pelleteiri.  They are Rikka and Pliatsikas.  At the start of the season, Pliatsikas played like three men and earned himself a national team call-up.  How has he not earned a spot on the starting line-up?  Kafes was invisible out there, most noticeable for flubbing a sitter high over the cross-bar in the first five minutes of the match and missing multiple tackles later on.  Pelleteiri, while lacking in the tackling department, did distribute quite well, so a Palletieri-Pliatsikas partnership at center-mid makes a good bit more sense than what we saw on Sunday.

And speaking of squad selection, given Georgeas’s tendency to hold the ball too long and make runs that take him too far up the field to defend against counter-attacks, why on earthwas he paired with the inexperienced Zorbas at right midfield?  I saw Alexopoulos repeatedly having to cover that side, leaving Majstorovicalone to mark two strikers in the center.  Combine this with the fact that we did not have an enforcer on the pitch and its absolutely no wonder we conceded three goals in thirty minutes.

Which brings us to the third and last goals.  This one was absolutely humiliating.  In the 71st minute, Thrasyvoulos’s #17 (Wellington) received the ball on our left flank, then beat three AEK players (Alexopoulos, Majstorovic and Kafes) then laid off a nice pass to #10 (Alves) who, after taking a touch that allowed him to elude the three AEK players that had closed him down, fired a venomous strike that secured the draw. Yes, that is right, two Thrasyvoulos player beat six AEKplayers with just one pass and a few touches.  Can anyone on our team tackle?  Can they even contain?  I’m no longer sure, but it certainly doesn’t help that, by this time in the match, the defense had been under so much pressure that they could not hold their shape.

What else went wrong?  Well, we’ve already talked a bit about squad selection, but Donisdid not help himself with his subsitution choices.  His first substitution, which came in the 60th minute, was Lagos for Djebbour.  I think most of us were completely baffled by this.  Arguably, the two best players at the start of the season were Edinho and Pliatsikas, yet Lagos, was has been middling at best, was our first sub in a game where the momentum had clearly swung to our opponent.  Eventually, I think after the third goal, Edinho came on for Zorbas.  And guess what?  Edinho had an immediate impact.  He gave their defense trouble, he beat defenders and fired off a few shots.  It didn’t win the game for us but it arguably did more to take the pressure off our defense than anything else.

At this point, one is tempted to say that things can only get better.  If only this were so.  We had trouble settling the ball, we had trouble tackling, and we had trouble transitioning to defense when we got dispossessed.  And our gaffer is making strange squad selection choices.  No, for things to get better, we need to focus on some fundamentals and make some fast changes to our line-up.  Here is my two cents:

Blanco—Djebbour

(Djebbour playing deeper than Blanco)

Scocco————Edinho
Pliatsikas—Pelletieri

Juanfran———–Ramos-Silva
Majstorovic–Alves

Saja

Then I’d sub in Nsaliwa for Pliatsiaks or Pelletieri, whoever needed it and Geogeas for Ramos-Silva. The Alves as center-back choice is not ideal, and its hard to judge how our center backs are really doing given the disorganization at the back and the lack of cover from the midfield, but it woult not hurt to rotate them and create a sense of competition for these spots.  I know, I know, everyone’s a critic, but something has to be done, and this is a better start than anything we’ve seen from Donis lately.  It’s easy to question now whether this guy knows what he is doing.