Carambau Posted September 23, 2019 Share Posted September 23, 2019 Aparicio He should shoot the Greek League to pieces.. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
King Costly Posted September 23, 2019 Author Share Posted September 23, 2019 11 hours ago, Carambau said: Aparicio He should shoot the Greek League to pieces.. He hasn't quite had such a big impact just yet Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nobby_McDonald Posted September 23, 2019 Share Posted September 23, 2019 That's Greece nailed. Well done. Going back to the youth intake discussion a few days back... I look at the trial match ratings and the PA/CA recommendations. If a player does well for both, he is immediately offered a contract. If he is poor in both, he is immediately released. If he is OK in at least one, I evaluate him at the end of his trial period, then decide whether to sign or release, and this is based on a number of other factors as well as his performance and his PA/CA. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
King Costly Posted September 23, 2019 Author Share Posted September 23, 2019 AS PAOK SalonikaFirst Half of 2022/23 Season Update Greek Super League With the Qatar World Cup throwing the scheduling into chaos, I have gone with a longer update for the first half of this season. The results on paper look decent but we just haven't played well at all in the League. Despite our signings, goals have been a real issue. Aparicio has had some niggling injury issues and the rest of the team has looked disjointed and bereft of confidence in most games - very frustrating! Despite our struggles, we still sit third in the table with games in hand and it could be much worse - just look at AEK below! After a slow start, but three victories, we put in a lifeless display against Panionios at home, playing against ten men for an hour. Still, we needed a last minute strike to save our blushes. We took advantage of AEK's sloppy start to pick up a big win against them but again needed a late goal to win at our local rivals Aris. Our first defeat of the season came at home against Olympiacos - a very boring game in which neither team deserved to win. Unfortunately for us, a goal from a set piece means Olympiacos have drawn first blood this season. We recovered with back-to-back wins against Apollon and Levadiakos but my word did we leave it late! We could so easily have been sat here with six fewer points. Hopefully the last game of a busy October - a 6-1 thrashing of Apollon - is a sign of things to come... Greek Cup We've looked far more comfortable in the Cup and are through to the knock-out stages after topping our group. Xanthi were the only team that could have caused us issues and we saw them off first at home before beating lower league clubs Veria (just!) and Ionikos. We'll take on our League rivals Panionios in the next round. Champions League / Europa League Oh so close to making it into the Champions League group stages for the first time! We were very comfortable against Hungarian side Ferencvaros but then got extremely unlucky and pulled Shakhtar out of the draw for the final play-off stage. They were the toughest team by far and probably the only one in the draw I would have considered us as big underdogs against. We were poor in the away leg, conceding two set piece goals before winning at home. The one goal margin just wasn't enough and to be fair, the scoreline doesn't really show the gulf in quality between the two teams. The defeat in the final play-off round meant we headed for the Europa League group stages instead. I thought we were quite unlucky again with the draw - Lokomotiv Moscow and Borussia Monchengladbach especially are no mugs. Due to the winter World Cup scheduling, we played a lot of our group stage games early and by taking maximum points from Maccabi Tel-Aviv and Lokomotiv, secured our place in the knock-out stages. We finished off the group with four points from Monchengladbach. If only we could take our European performances into the League! #OwnTheTop Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hootieleece Posted September 23, 2019 Share Posted September 23, 2019 Looks like you have a few games in hand...take advantage of them and you will win the League. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
King Costly Posted September 30, 2019 Author Share Posted September 30, 2019 AS PAOK SalonikaDecember/January 2022/23 Update Greek Super League The winter World Cup in Qatar meant we had a ridiculously busy January and if you had offered me eight wins from nine, I would have definitely taken it. We signed off 2022 with a comfortable win at Xanthi before a couple of average performances against Iraklis and Levadeiakos thankfully led to another six points. Our second defeat of the season followed against Olympiacos - we were poor and a couple of defensive mistakes handed them the game. After the victories against Iraklis and Panathinaikos, I decided to tweak the system to give the wide men more freedom as we just weren't scoring enough goals. It looks to have made an instant impact! Local rivals Aris were the first victims. We then picked up a brilliant win at lacklustre AEK before Panaitolikos were given an almighty tonking! Greek Cup A pretty straightforward victory against Panionios in the 5th round and we'll now take on Apollon in the quarters. Another semi-final appearance looks on the cards. Europa League No games played in the Europa League since the last update but we've found out our opponent for the first knockout round - Dutch side Heerenveen. Transfers I wasn't planning to do much in January. The finances have started to crash a little bit unfortunately due to the increase in our wage budget. The domestic prize money is pretty poor in Greece so we'll be reliant on European competitions to push us forward. We did let Chuba Akpom go to West Brom for £4m - his contract was running out and he was struggling to even get on the bench. Interest then mounted in our left-back Guillermo Vidal. We rejected an offer from PSG and triggered his contract extension so he had three years left with us. On the last day of the transfer window, Dortmund made our mind up for us. An initial fee of £30m was enough for the board to step in. I understand - that's a phenomenal fee for the club and not bad for a guy we plucked from Uruguay on a free two years ago! That final day move did leave us in a bit of a predicament - we had no first-team left-back to take his place. I had scouted a few already as I wanted to sign a young back-up in the summer so we bit the bullet and got one in... There's no way we could replace Vidal like-for-like but I'm hopeful Martinovic will develop into a solid left-back. He joins from Red Star Belgrade for £1.1m Bona gives us another left-footed option out wide, arriving from Dinamo Bucharest for £1.5m Blahic looks like he could develop into a very decent player. He cost us just £425k from Ajaccio #OwnTheTop Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hootieleece Posted October 1, 2019 Share Posted October 1, 2019 Looks like you have Greece under control...but be careful Olympiacos seems to be up for the fight. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
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