Not a great result, but definitely one we can settle for.
We started off excellently, controlling the game completely, and within the first ten minutes we had two excellent chances to score (one hit the crossbar), but the rain was really coming down and less than twenty minutes into the match the pitch was flooded. Not sure if the pitch just couldn’t take it, or if the rain really was that bad, but I remember some days when I used to go to the stadium (one game against Larissa comes to mind) when the pitch would flood to the point where the ball just wouldn’t roll. Seemed like that was the case on saturday. It was quite unfortunate really since, as I mentioned, we started off quite well and had the conditions been better, I think we could have kept it up.
It was nice to see 20,000 supporters in the stands, despite the rain.
Overall it was a pretty good weekend for us aside from our game as well. Aris beat PAO today, which means we are now even with PAO in the standings (26 points), and its still only 5 points which separate us from a play off spot, something which is quite possible.
Highlights from our game available at the bottom of this link
AEK has beaten the locals courtesy of goals from Manolas and two from Lagos.Unfortunately,I didn’t watch the game,but highlights can be found on this link….
I hope AEKMAN74 won’t mind me adding to his post, but I figured I’d just add to his rather than post a new entry. I only managed to find a decent stream in time for the second half so that’s all I can comment on, but I still won’t say much. To be honest, we really should have scored at least another two goals in the final 45 minutes, with the chances we had. However, credit to Larissa, they managed to claw their way back. Also, credit for the their second goal, it was some very nice football indeed on their part.
The fact that we managed to let Larissa get within one goal of drawing the match however, after having a 3-0 lead from so early on, is a fairly scary thought considering we have the playoffs and a Cup Final coming up.
I won’t say much more about the game, I missed quite a bit of it. It is a shame, however, to see Larissa drop to the second division. I know alot of people may be happy about it, but I personally would much rather see teams like Panionios, Xanthi, and Volou out of our league as soon as possible. Larissa are a club with a brand new and very attractive stadium, supporters who managed to create an impressive atmosphere on Sunday, a side who recently won the cup and also had an impressive run in the UEFA Cup a few years back. These are the teams who should be staying up in order to benefit our league in general, rather than clubs run and operated by scum like Panionios, Volou, and Kavala (as well as many others… ).
Oh well, the league is pretty much done for the season aside from one more game. Now we have the playoffs and Cup final to look forward to. What will happen after that, come the start of next season, none of us will know. However, the team has a great chance now to win a cup and book a place in the qualifying rounds for Champions League. Its all I can hope for right now…
Im pretty sure Ive used that title before but Im going to use it again because I feel it works for the occasion. Today, in the same stadium, against the same team we so miserably drew 0-0 with five days ago, we witnessed a performance from AEK that was unlike anything we’ve seen yet this season (in my opinion). Why? Maybe because Manolo decided to make the changes that were needed soon enough (some of the changes most of us were calling for before the last game as well!)…
I don’t know how start off other than by saying we were superb! We dominated them in the midfield, in their own end… we out passed them, we were better lined out tactically, our players were up for the task at hand, and it was just all around a wonderful game from our boys. The score line of 4-0 certainly suggests the same however to be honest the match could have very easily ended up with a few more goals for AEK.
Saja? Didn’t have to do much to be honest… I may have missed a few bits here and there but from what I saw our defense did most of the dirty work, forcing Saja to have very little to deal with.
Our defense? I don’t know what to say, but I loved everything our defense today represented. Passion and experience from Georgeas and Dellas, young talent from Mateos, and hard work and dedication from Karabelas… it was enough to get the job done, and with ease. The Mateos-Dellas combination at centre back is one Im really a fan of and I hope Manolo keeps going with it… I feel the two compliment each other very well when on the pitch. Georgeas had a wonderful assist on Scocco’s first goal today and did everything he needed to, just like every match he plays in. I realise he never was and certainly never will be an outstanding talent in terms of wing backs, but he plays with some much heart and has a great understanding of the game, something which many other players lack… ultimately though, it leads to us seeing the most we can from him both in terms of going forward and defending. Karabelas also had a good game and to be honest, Ive been quite pleased with him this season. He’s another player who always puts the effort in, his crosses have been improving, and I see him getting involved in plays far more often (though that may just be me).
In midfield we had Michel, Diop, Makos, and Guerreiro and it was a combination which worked! I just hope Manolo takes note and doesn’t change things come next match. To be honest, I don’t remember Makos standing out today however, poor streams means I missed some of the match. I did read that he played very well so I guess I just overlooked him. The same I would have to say for Michel… in fact it was Diop and Guerreiro who stood out today (that’s not to say Michel and Makos didn’t do their job, they most certainly must have considering the way we controlled things in the midfield today).
Before going in to specifics, I’d like to just say that our midfield as a whole was almost perfect today. It was as if they all were on the same page with each other… positioning, passing, defending, moving the ball around and controlling it when needed, we were doing everything we could to control the play and create when the opportunity arose, and our activity inside the PAOK box today suggests the same (compared to how rarely we broke their defense down just five days ago). Diop has certainly been bringing his best with him recently and he was finally rewarded today with a goal (after hitting the post twice last match). Roger brought the creativity we so desperately lacked last match and to see the whole team played when he was in control was wonderful. Id also like to point out that his set pieces are superb. A free kick and a corner he took today both led to goals and every ball he was sending in the box was perfect.
Up front things got interesting, with Blanco starting and Scocco playing a free role alongside him. At the end of the match Scocco said he finally played his best position after two and a half years and his two goals (both classic Scocco goals) support what he said. Ive thought about how he would be up front before and Im glad to see it tried out… with Guerreiro taking control of things behind the forwards, I think we can afford to see Scocco up front. Blanco played well and tried hard to get a goal to his name but things just didn’t work out for him today… I still hope to see him start next match, and especially in Toumba… he always seems to find a way to score up there
Also, our fourth goal came from Dellas… a lovely timed run resulted in him latching on to Guerreiro’s cross before PAOK’s keeper could get his hands to it. Fantastic seeing him get on the score board today.
I must say, looking at our goals scored today, we saw two goals scored with headers (shows we have options in the box from both Diop and Dellas, as well as Libe when fit), a goal from from team work and crisp passing, and a goal created from some fantastic individual talent (as well as good decision making from Michel)… overall a perfect set of goals scored today, clearly showing how we took control of the game today in every aspect.
Now, will we see the same thing from our boys the next matches coming up? I suppose some of that depends on Manolo, but things are going well and after today only a fool would tinker with the team further. The win today sees PAOK remain further behind while we reclaim third (however Oly Volou and Kavala are not far behind) and PAO’s slip against Larissa means if we keep putting in solid performances, we could end up in a decent position come play off time.
However, what I hope for more than anything is that we go to Toumba and play exactly like we played today. If we do, the qualification to the final is ours WITHOUT A DOUBT. Even in Toumba, this PAOK team today will have no chance if we play the way we did.
FORZA AEKARA!!!! Vamos Bien!
4-0... its been a while since we've seen that scoreline!
Lovely 4-0 score, Blanco (twice), Libe, and DELLAS all on the scoreboard, such a great site to see! Blanco’s form has been incredible lately and now that Zorro is back it feels like a day hasn’t passed since three years ago.
Unfortunately, we still sit a fair bit back from the top. However, what is important is that we took care of getting a positive result against a team who has always been a bit of a struggle for us. We didn’t play the best football we’ve seen all season long, but we turned things on when we needed to, took advantage of having an extra player, and made sure didn’t slip points like we did last week.
Arabatzis started in net and did well. He’s been looking quite solid in the air lately, rarely fails when he commits to the ball and I can’t complain with him at all. We needed him to be in top form seeing as Larissa came to the game with the intention of picking up some points. They created a number of decent chances, particularly in the first, which fortunately for us resulted in nothing.
I’m going to hold back on commenting much on individual players since my stream wasn’t the greatest, but I did notice a huge improvement in our play when Lagos and Kafes came on in exchange for Leonardo and Scocco. Scocco was busy upfront from what I saw, though the addition of Kafes and Lagos to the match seemed to improve our attack as a whole. Leonardo created little from what I saw, but I did miss alot so I don’t want to be too hard on the guy.
The referee was horrendous today, to the point where I was starting to feel quite outraged (well, not quite but I was certainly irritated). I can only imagine what everyone in the stadium was feeling. Unfortunately, only around 6,000 showed up for the match however as it was a very cold weekend in Athens (from the pictures I saw it looks like they received a decent amount of snow for so early in December). Hopefully we’ll see a better attendance figure at the match with Zenit, despite the late start time of 10:00 at night (well done UEFA, well done).
Also, it’s worth noting that Jimenez was kicked out of the match today and forced to watch much of it from the stands. He was off when the substitutions were made however it looked like he was still contacting his assistants on the pitch.
So, a decent performance, yet a fantastic result. Hopefully this gives us a confidence boost ahead of our critical match with Zenit!
As always, leave comments below. I would appreciate any as it is hard to watch these matches with such poor streams available!
Half time and were up 1-0 thanks to a… you guessed it… goal by Zorro! He’s back!
Pretty dull performance by us. I wouldn’t say we were playing poor out there, but we really need to lift things up if we’re gonna hope for a result against St.Petersburg this week. Scocco and Leo had good opportunities in front of goal which resulted in little.
Referee has, from what I’ve been seeing, calling way too much! Not that this is anything new in our league, but we can’t touch a player today without getting a foul!
1-0 is nothing to settle on just yet when facing Larissa, they’ve looked a little dangerous the times they made it into our box, and unless we score more the game will go either way.
Oly is leading at half time and guess what, another penalty for them. Haven’t seen the play yet so it could be a fair call but I really wonder how many penalties this team is going to receive this season.
So, I watched most of the first half and parts of the second, but one thing was obvious today. We didn’t deserve even a point today looking at how we played. PAO tied 1-1 at home against Larissa, yet for the second week in a row we fail to capitalize on a great opportunity and instead of being that much closer to first we now sit in fourth place (with three teams playing tomorrow who could catch up to us).
We had very little organization and could not gain any control of the game. We started with Djebbour and Blanco but many feel that Libe should have gotten the start. I know he only recently returned from injury but I think he could have made a difference. However, to add to our injury problems, Djebbour seems to have injured his shoulder, an injury which has bothered him in the past as well. I’m not sure the details yet, but things are starting to look tough again. Both Manolas (completely undeserved) and Dellas (who was on the bench!) received red cards meaning our options on the pitch are starting to look thin once again.
PAOK today were average at best, and had we showed up and played some football I am confident we could have seen even all three points. It’s a shame really since PAOK has seemed to become that team lately that we can always count on for points. Afterall, the last time they beat us in the league was 2007.
Our shots on net statistic for the match is pretty frightening… only 3 in the entire 90 minutes! And our one goal came from a penalty. Things really aren’t looking good, and we have some critical matches coming up in both the league and Europe… hopefully we can turn things around but it does seem like we’ve been saying that for a while.
Alot happened during and after the game, and I’m still confused around many of the details. Firstly, there were a couple incidents on the bench. One main one involved Dellas and a PAOK fan who threw a 1.5 liter bottle at the players (I am not sure if the bottle was thrown at the bench or Dellas specifically). Dellas threw the bottle back resulting in a red card. I’ve heard that Dellas is looking into taking legal action against the fan, so we’ll see. However, this is not nearly the first time incidents like this have happened at Toumba. You would figure they would look into resolving the the problems, maybe by making moderations to the stadium? I hate to see that happen, but its clear that fans like these cannot be given all the privileges of other fans. I know all teams in Greece has fans who cause trouble, and AEK certainly has many. However, this sort of thing is pretty much your average occurrence for a PAOK game.
It doesn’t end there though! Remember the incidents involving fans AEK players after the Panionios match? Well, 50 PAOK fans were outside the AEK change rooms yelling at Dellas, Dimitriadis, and co… only in Greece does stuff like this happen! How 50 fans can get there in the first place, let alone stay without being forced away immediately, I will never understand.
If anyone watched the match, please leave a comment. I would like to comment more on our actual performance but I was distracted at the time of the game. Thanks!
Well, Saturday came and I was all excited, waiting to watch my team continue it’s undefeated streak. Saturday evening came, I turned my television on and spent the next ninety minutes or so watching the most depressing performance from AEK in recent memory.
Our team looked dreadful. Honestly, the score could easily have been 3-0 or more for Larissa had our post, some luck, and a determined Saja not prevented that from happening. Larissa pressured from kickoff and looked set on getting nothing less than a win from early on. I had hoped things would change a little as the game progresses but that never happened. Larissa dominated throughout the entire match and they weren’t even happy sitting on their 1-0 lead.
Nobody on our team except perhaps Saja seemed interested in playing some decent football that night. Our defense did nothing against the likes of Metin and other attacking players for Larissa. Our midfield was just as useless on the pitch defensively as it was offensively. And our offense? Well, you would have thought they weren’t even there! Blanco was playing midfield/defense again, Scocco had a couple of shots but not one even forced a save from the Larissa keeper and Djebbour was with the ball in a good position on a number of occasions but always found a way to loose possession to the opposition.
Nemeth actually played this game! Came in as a sub (remember, Larissa at home was the last game he played for AEK before Saturday, and he also scored that day) but he really didn’t make a huge impact on the game. You could tell he wanted to score and he tried bringing some life to our forwards but he really didn’t have the ball enough to make any difference.
Saja was the one player who seemed willing to put in an effort after making some critical saves.
Aris drew the same day 1-1 against Kavala. A win on Saturday night would have meant our lead over them would have increased. Instead, it was reduced by one point. Sure, there is still some distance between us but our two next games coming up are Kavala at home and PAOK away. If we play the way we have been the past two games then I dont see us getting away with any more than a point in the next two weeks. Of course, we may be able to turn things around and pull off some decent results against Kavala (even our bext of this season will stand only a small chance against PAOK), but I’m not going to hold my breath.
We got the three points we so desperately needed, as well as a little bit of reassurance for the players and fans. Beating a team like Larissa with a score of 3-1 is always a nice thing. Sure, Larissa might not be at their best, but they are rarely an easy team to win against (I feel like I’ve said that many times already this season).
We went up first with an incredibly strong header from Majstorovic (it was from outside the small box and the Larissa keeper still couldn’t stop it even though he managed to get a hand to it!). This guy is really mastering the art of scoring from set pieces, great stuff to see.
Larissa tied it up late in the first half, forcing the team to head to the lockers with a sour mood from the supporters in the stands (only 8,000 showed up though, it was 4:45 on a Monday night and I had to leave as soon as I got home from school). I thought it was over then, up to then we really weren’t playing all that great. Our defence in particular was quite poor, making mistakes which almost led to goal (mostly up to their usual tricks of passing the ball back and controlling until an opponent got it and had a chance on goal). Saja wasn’t fantastic. I can’t blame him for the goal since it was a really well placed shot but he made some more poor clearances and passes, and his confidence really seems to be getting worse. Hopefully we’ll see an improvement.
Some key players really deserve credit for this game. Firstly, Karabelas. The kid has been steadily improving at a fast rate, and was MVP for the previous two games. This game he was terrific, he’s defending well, making good runs, and contributing a lot to the games overall now. Turns out Dusan knew what he wanted when we wanted to get Karabelas from Aris.
Nameth! He made all the difference when he came on. Aside from scoring the goal, he made a nice pass which almost led to another goal as soon as he came on. He played great, which was good to see since it seemed like he toned things down the previous games. It was also great to see Nemeth run right up to the fans when he scored, and without hesitation. It is well known how much he appreciates the fans but it feels great to see him celebrate with us, a really nice thing to see from a player on the team.
I really wasn’t impressed with Guerreiro. He started great when he first came to us but now, he does very little. He spent most of the time with the ball just wasting time. When its extra time thats fine, but not when there is still plenty of time to score one or even two more goals.
Every other player had a good game. Scocco, Araujo, Gentzoglou (his confidence his improving and he’s turning out to be a pretty solid player), Blanco (three goals in three games) as well as everyone else.
Overall, we played a much better second half. The pressure must have done good for our players, who began to attack and began controlling the game much more. Larissa still had the occasional chance but I began to feel more sure of our players as the game went on.
Still, it was not a fantastic win, but it’s exactly what we needed at this point, both for the players and the fans. Hopefully we will begin to see more confident results.
Manduca was MVP of the game.
One more note, another two posts in this game! That’s 13 this season (I believe including Europa League as well).
So, as is typical with AEK, we blow an early 1-0 lead and end up with a draw (today, the match against PAS, the Cup Final, the match with BATE).
My stream today was poor quality, so I can’t comment as much as I could have. But basically what we saw throughout the match was that we had many chances, yet we only scored one of them.
We went up first after Manduca headed in the ball off of Karabelas’ cross. Saja saved an Ergotelis penalty, Ergotelis scored a goal, scored another and went up 2-1. While this was happening we were missing some of the easiest chances imaginable and we didn’t have a penalty scored. Late in the match though, we were awarded a questionable penalty (I personally don’t think it was a penalty but I wont complain since we should have had the penalty earlier on). Blanco easily scored this and we got away with a draw.
Ergotelis have never beaten us before this match, and that still remains true (we have won six games and tied four).
We are now in seventh with only three points separating us from third and only two separating us from a spot to qualify for Europe. Had we won today we might have been in fourth but as we all know, this is AEK that we love and follow so much. And as we also know, AEK never likes to do things the easy way.
Saja played today, made some fine saves to keep us in the game. Overall, we played a decent match, but really should have scored our chances. We were not great, but we saw moments of brilliant passing, but those moments were few. This is not the AEK we all want to see, the AEK we are used to seeing, not like the AEK of 2007-2008 (a team consisting of a Blanco that could score with ease, Liberopoulos, Ribo, Dellas, Zikos, the fantastic Papastatopoulos, Kallon, Edinho) that ended up with the highest scoring offense, the fewest conceding defence.
Things are a long way from being how we want them to be. A very long way.
The bus with the AEK players was attacked by AEK supporters that made the trip to Crete to watch the match. I wouldn’t be surprised to see some more attacks in Athens (the plane should be arriving soon if it hasn’t arrived already).
Oh well… we play Bate on Thursday, with basically no defence available, and Larissa on Monday (the match was postponed due to a Beyonce show).
Lets see what happens there, though I am not expecting much.
Yep, you guessed it, another derby on the first matchday of the season. And AEK will once again be one of the teams playing in the derby, just like last year. And who will our opponent be? Yep, its Olympiakos!
The game is still a while away but Im sure the likes of Bajevic, Blanco, Scocco, and Kyrgiakos are waiting for their revenge after our unfortunate loss in the Greek Cup Final of 2009. This should be an exciting game, as this fixture always proves to be.
The schedule for next season is up on Superleague Greece’s site. Our first fifteen games are as follows:
Match Round 1 AEK-Olympiakos
Match Round 2 Atromitos-AEK
Match Round 3 AEK-Iraklis
Match Round 4 Pas Giannina-AEK
Match Round 5 AEK-PAO
Match Round 6 Skoda Xanthi-AEK
Match Round 7 AEK-Panthrakikos
Match Round 8 Aris-AEK
Match Round 9 Ergotelis-AEK
Match Round 10 AEK-Larissa
Match Round 11 Kavala-AEK
Match Round 12 AEK-PAOK
Match Round 13 Panionios-AEK
Match Round 14 AEK-Levadeiakos
Match Round 15 Asteras Tripolis-AEK
The team written first is home, while the team written second is away. The matches for rounds 16-30 are in the same order but the home team will be away and the opposite way around.
All of our first three derbies (Oly,PAO,PAOK) are at home for the first round, so this should benefit us a little.
Link with information and the other first round fixtures here.
The new teams this year are Atromitos, Pas Giannina, and Kavala.
The only dates released so far are that the first games will be played on the 22nd and 23rd of August.
In other AEK news, Leonardo has been saying that he will quite possibly be playing at AEK next season. Lets just wait and hope that this is in fact true.
