AEK 1-1 Panathinaikos

The 4th of March was the last time we were able to watch an AEK game… who would have thought then that it wouldn’t be until the 7th of June, over 3 months later, when we would next get the chance to watch AEK play. Needless to say, it was somewhat reassuring to have a game to look forward to again, even if the stadium was empty and the substitutes and staff on the bench were sitting a considerable distance apart from each other.

The result was somewhat of a disappointment if I’m being honest, as was the performance itself. Earlier in the day, PAOK had lost at home to Olympiakos by a score of 1-0, a result which as a result of the point deduction handed to PAOK would have given AEK the opportunity to move up to 2nd place in the standings with a win. Instead, it was Panathinaikos who were looking more likely to get away with the win at times.

It was clear the three month break from playing had taken its toll on the players; for most of the first half, we struggled to make many significant moves forward and only managed one opportunity on target. The second half was a slight improvement but again it was Panathinaikos who looked more convincing as they had one goal called back for a foul but then managed to go ahead in the 65th minute.

Thankfully we were able to find a response 10 minutes later when Livaja managed to finish from a tough angle but ultimately we were forced to settle for the 1 point. There was considerable discussion today regarding Carrera’s hesitation to make substitutions earlier on the match when it was clear something wasn’t working. Eventually Oliveira was brought on in the 67th minute but it wasn’t until the 87th when Araujo got put in the match for a chance to make a difference with just a few minutes left – Oliveira’s introduction made the impact we were looking for has he provided the assist on Livaja’s goal, but it makes me wonder if he could have had an even bigger impact if he was introduced to match earlier on.

As a result of the 1 point we received following yesterday’s draw, we now find ourselves level in 2nd place with PAOK on 52 points. Panathinaikos are further behind on 45 points and are less of a threat, though its whether we can find a way to clinch 2nd place which worries me – being able to do so would guarantee us the chance to try to qualify for Champions League next season, something which would naturally be a huge boost for the club.

 

Despite fans not being allowed in the stadium as part of measures put in place to slow the spread of COVID-19, a number of supporters still gathered outside the stadium in Nea Filadelfeia and watched the match on a projector screen:

Speaking of the stadium, there’s been some more progress on its construction since my last post – most noticeably, the preparations are being in put place for the exterior facade to be mounted. It will be exciting to see some of the panels start to go up so we can start to really get a sense of what the completed stadium will look like from the outside.

AEK 2-0 Lamia

The improvement in fortunes under Kostenglou has continued with another 3 points following today’s win over Lamia, a win which brings us up to 5th place with 6 points (Olympiakos, PAOK, and Xanthi are all 3 for 3 so far).

Truth be told, it wasn’t a phenomenal game by any means, but it sounds like we did enough to control the match and make a couple of our chances count. From what I could make out on the radio, it seemed like though we managed to control the game for the most part, it was making any meaningful gain’s into Lamia’s box which we struggled with. Livaja stepped up when needed though, as he did last week, and was involved with both of our goals scored today (the first was a pass from Livaja which resulted in an own goal while the second was a Livaja free kick slotted into the net by Vranjes).

All in all a critical 3 points as we prepare for our critical test against PAOK in a couple week’s time. Before that though, we face Panaitolikos in Agrinio, a match which we really shouldn’t struggle with considering Panaitolikos currently sit second from last, one 0 points.

Progress on the stadium is continuing at a steady rate. This video shows some great aerial views over the stadium at sunrise this morning:

AEK 0-2 Atromitos

Well, I think its safe to say that the Championship is over for us at this point. As is the Champions League following our 2-0 loss to Bayern earlier this week… I guess all we have to play for now is the Cup, a far cry from the position we found ourselves in last season.

Today’s loss leaves us on 17 points, well behind PAOK who are on 26 and Atromitos on 24. Olympiakos are still within touching distance in 3rd thanks to their 1-1 draw with PAO today, though that is little consolation to us considering the hopes we had for the team before the start of the season.

Today’s game was a frustrating one to follow. We were the better team for 80 minutes and had 3 posts during those first 80 minutes, but no goals to show for it. Then, a couple lapses in our defense in the dying minutes of the game an Atromitos found a way to get not only one but two in the back of our own net. Atromitos are a strong side this season so part of me isn’t all that surprised, but its still a tough one to swallow considering how close we came to finding the back of the net ourselves. Atromitos’ coach even conceded himself that his side were lucky not to go down by a goal or two earlier in the match. As Atromitos striker Koulouris said, they knew that the longer AEK went without scoring, the more they would open up and it ended up being our cross town opponents who were able to capitalize on their chances.

It never helps having to play a game in front of empty stands, especially in a stadium as massive and expansive as OAKA. I believe this should be our last match of the supporters ban so knowing that we’ll have supporters in the stands for our upcoming home games against Xanthi and Lamia is at least something to look forward to.

AEK 3-0 Panathinaikos

The league finally started back up this weekend and AEK wasted no time getting back into their groove. Going into the match, its fair to say that I didn’t expect PAO to really trouble us much and, aside from a few scary moments at the start of the match, it was a game that went pretty much as I expected.

Before I go into a bit of detail about the game, its worth going over some news from earlier this week. The courts in Greece finally released their final decisions regarding the PAOK-Olympiakos match, and the PAOK-AEK match and while some may say that PAOK got off lightly (which I think they did), the news was overall pretty positive from an AEK perspective. Specifically, we were awarded the 3-0 win on paper after the fiasco involving Savidis and his gun after storming the pitch during our match against PAOK.

Bearing that in mind, along with our win today over PAO, we now find ourselves four points away from winning the league. Thats right, four points is all we need from our next four games against Platanias, Levadeiakos, Kerkyra, and Apollon. Three of those teams make up the bottom three of the standings and considering this has been one of our most successful seasons in recent memory, the championship is practically guaranteed to be ours as far as I’m concerned. Now obviously we don’t want to jump to any conclusions but its hard to not get excited about that. On top of that, we still have a pretty good chance of advancing in the cup, our stadium is making good progress, our basketball club has already won the cup and is close to a spot in the Champions League final four, all of that is making this one great season to be an AEK supporter all around.

Back to today’s game: it was a bit of a nervous start for us as PAO managed to create some chances early on. They even forced a huge save by Barkas that kept things even at 0-0 after Coulibaly managed to get a shot off from close range. Once things settled down though after about 10 minutes of play, it was mostly AEK from that point onwards. Araujo opened the scoring for us after yet another tremendous finish before Galo calmly put away a second goal for us. Araujo featured once again on the score sheet after scoring again to make it 3-0 and seal the win for us.

It helped our cause that PAO’s Insua received a red card in the first half but its safe to say that AEK were always going to be favourites against this PAO team. Araujo had an exceptional game once again, but Lazaros, Hult, and Galo also played great. On the other hand, I was a little concerned by Vranjes who at times seemed a little too relaxed in defense. Usually he’s extremely solid so I’m not too worried, but I feel like it was one of his weaker performances with AEK this season.

Our first goal is definitely the highlight of the match (and most likely of the week), but the other two goals were also very well taken. Its also worth keeping an eye out for Lazaros’ crossbar. If Lazaros had managed to score that, we would have had yet another contender for goal of the season from him.

Larissa 0-0 AEK

So that was disappointing…

At least the result doesn’t signal the end of the road for us just yet. The 1 point we managed to salvage is still a big one as it still keeps us within reach of first, but I think its fair to assume these draws are starting to become a bit tiring. Yesterday’s result marks our fifth draw so far this campaign. Thats five draws out of 18 games, which means a lot of dropped points that we simply can’t afford to drop. It also doesn’t help that both PAOK and Oly secured 3-0 wins earlier today against Apollon and Xanthi respectively.

I was only able to watch the first half but what I saw from it didn’t exactly fill me with confidence for the second half. We had a couple sporadic chances but we never really showed any control over the game. It didn’t help that Larissa came into the game with the idea of defending as much as possible and the highlight reel below suggests just that. Most of our legitimate chances were limited to far shots from outside of the box while the few times we managed to break into the box, our efforts were quickly pushed aside by Larissa’s defense.

Overall there isn’t too much to be happy about with yesterday’s result but if there is one thing worth noting, its that we have now gone 17 games undefeated in all competitions (League, Cup, and Europa League). The last time we went 17 games undefeated in all competitive matches was in 2002, the season in which we drew all of our Champions League group stage matches (including against Roma and Real Madrid). For a little trip down memory lane, heres a reminder of some of the great players we had that season: Chiotis, Kostenoglou, Zagorakis, Tsiartas, Nikolaidis, Kasapis, Katsouranis, Lakis, and Kapsis. Don’t get me wrong, we have a decent squad this season but I would give anything to be able to see an AEK squad like that play again…

 

Panetolikos 1-4 AEK

Well its certainly nice to be back! Don’t get me wrong, I love the holidays, and getting back to work and the daily routine that comes with it wasn’t all that exciting but hey, if theres one good thing to take from this time of year, its the fact that we get to watch AEK again!

This year especially is an exciting time since for the first time in as long as I can remember, we start a new year with a legitimate chance at a Championship. Its still far too early to make any guesses as to what might happen come the end of this season, but our game yesterday against Panetolikos was certainly an indication that this team means business.

Now its worth pointing out that despite the fact that we comfortably outscored Panetolikos, it wasn’t always an easy match. They certainly came close a few times but some brilliant goal keeping from Tsintotas kept us in the match. Having said that, our performance offensively was really enjoyable to watch. We saw some great ball movement, brilliant finishing, and it seemed clear to me that not only were the players well rested, but they seemed confident in what their approach to the match should be.

Our first goal came from Bakasetas, a long range effort off of a free kick. It was a beautifully struck shot that had just the right mix of power and dip. Our second goal came from the penalty spot after Lazaros tucked his penalty shot in the lower corner of the net. The penalty was won by Bakasetas after he was taken down in the box. I don’t think there was any doubt that it was a penalty after watching the replays.

Our third goal was the result of some composure on the part of Araujo, who did well to put the ball in the back of the net after a great effort by Bakasetas. Starting to see a theme here? Three of our four goals were either scored by Bakasetas, a result of a penalty he drew, or directly from an assist of his. AEK365 were justified in giving him a 10 out of 10 rating as it was quite easily his best match with AEK in my opinion. His assist on the third goal is worth watching multiple times as it really is quite brilliant. In fact, everything about that goal from the build up to the finish was beautiful to watch.

Our fourth goal was also quite a special one to watch. Not only was the one time football leading up the goal played out perfectly, but the goal itself was scored by the substitute Lopes who had come on less than a minute earlier.

Great stuff overall and though our defense did slip a bit at times, I couldn’t ask for a better start to the new year.

Over the holidays, we made two singings that could help provide some depth to the squad. One of the singings is Erik Moran, the Spanish defensive midfielder we bought from Spanish side Leganes. In addition to that, we also acquired Masoud Shojaei from Panionios, an Iranian midfielder who has played many years of his career in Spain, as well as with the Iranian national team. He had a good season and a half with Panionios and I was personally quite happy to see the singing go through.

Moran didn’t feature in yesterday’s game, but Masoud did. He came on in the 52nd minute and though he had less than half a game to make an impression, he certainly seems to be off to a good start with the club. He played a huge role in our fourth goal and generally showed some composure along with some great ball distribution. Its still a little early to say for sure but I think he could fit in very well with this team.

 

AEK wins in Thessaloniki 4-0

AEK won what seemed a fairly easy match. The team’s form seemed, from the sunday night highlights, to be in good shape. We saw goals from Lyberopoulos who scored from another long range effort, one from Papastothopoulos who scored his first of the season, a goal from Blanco and one from Kallon.

The first goal came in the 20th minute, a header from Papastathopoulos off of a cross into the middle of the box by Bourbos that was out of reach for PAOK’s goalkeeper.

The second goal for us came three minutes later. Blanco ran up to the PAOK goal just in time to reach a nice cross by Edinho which made its way to Blanco who was left unmarked by the PAOK defense. The play was originally set up by a nice pass (his passing must be influenced by spending time with Rivaldo) which made its way past a PAOK defender straight to the feet of Edinho.

The third goal was another one of Lybeoropoulos’s long range efforts, this time low on the ground, too low for the keeper to reach it in time. This goal came two minutes after the second by Blanco, and was the third for AEK in five minutes. It was a low and very fast shot from just outside the box.

The fourth goal for AEK came in the 82nd minute, another long range shot, this time from Kallon. It started off with well organized passing by our AEK’s forward and midfielders. Pappas set up Kallon perfectly outside the box, and Kallon, seeing that there were no PAOK defenders challenging him took a high, almost lob like shot which sunk into the goal. Kallon had plenty of time to set himself up perfectly into the right position and took the shot with minimal effort.

Overall, the game was much like many recent AEK games. The play was very organized and smoothly flowing and our defense was quite tight, PAOK only getting a few efforts on our goal the whole night.

Our substitutions were Kallon who replaced Blanco, Pappas who replaced Edinho, and Kone who replaced Rivaldo. Rivaldo got quite a bit of applause from the PAOK fans as he was leaving the pitch.

Unfortunately, Skoda Xanthi could not hold off olympiacos who won 4-1. Due to this our only hopes for the chamionship are if Iraklis win in Athens (quite unlikely although they won a good game 5-2 on Sunday), or if the court case goes in favour of Apollon Kalamarias which would remove three points from olympiacos.