Rovers can avoid Greek tragedy

So, who are FC PAOK Salonika and why do I think they are a bigger potential money-maker for Shamrock Rovers than the €100,000 cash bonanza they are destined to pocket next week should they collect three points from their two remaining Airtricity league games against UCD and Galway United?

A draw in the Europa League group stage is worth a cool €70,000 and a win will bag double that amount – yes €40,000 more than winning the Airtricity League! There’s the context of big-time football in a nutshell.

The back-to-back games against PAOK Salonika are a real opportunity for Shamrock Rovers to further buffer their coffers and I say that honestly.

After taking in a highly-competitive and gutsy 3-3 draw between the U11 girls of Lourdes Celtic and Shelbourne at the AUL Complex on Sunday morning, followed by a Shamrock Rovers women’s training match out in Tallaght, I stumbled across an internet live-stream of the FC PAOK V OFI Crete game in the Greek Superleague.

That was the end of X-factor!

Before kick-off, PAOK were second in the table, level on points with Olympiacos CFP but with two extra games played. They had won three of their first five games and lost two – having scored eight and conceded five.

Crete had four points from their first three games and were low table.

On paper it looked like one PAOK should win but the reality was different.

They bossed the opening 20 minutes of the games with 62% possession, nailing 152 successful passes out of 176. Not bad.

When they are patient, they are a nice passing side – often playing through the entire width of the midfield in triangle passing movements. Its effective too but when they got to the final third they seemed to lack any ability to really penetrate the Crete defence and more often than not resorted to long-range efforts from outside the box which were little trouble to the opposing goalkeeper.

They also tended to attack in numbers with their defenders playing quite high up the field and Crete almost caught them on the counter-attack on a number of occasions with them often being left 2v2 when the away side broke.

You’d be thinking that Rohan Ricketts could get a couple of opportunities to expose them at the back, like he did for his goal against Derry, with a long ball over the top.  Assuming he plays of course.

In fact any of the Rovers wingers could cause them a few problems because they also seemed to defend quite centrally in the opening half meaning that Crete were often able to check down their left and right (mainly left) channel and cut crosses back from the byline.

In fairness, their goalkeeper, Costas Chalkias (former Portsmouth if memory serves me right) was good at dealing with whatever came to him in the air but he wasn’t really tested on the deck in this game and I’d be thinking there’s something potentially worth exploiting there.

Crete seemed to get more chances down the left channel and that’s probably because of the immense attacking prowess of Etto – he wears the 77 jersey – and he is up and down that tramline like a yo-yo in the hands of a hyperactive child!

The Brazilian defender has electric pace and plays one-twos off the central midfielders for fun before galloping up the line to get on the return. Most of his crosses though were high into the box and nothing I saw gave me too much concern that Sives and Murray wouldn’t be able to deal with what he was delivering on the night.

At the end of the first half they had 64% possession with 302 successful passes out of their attempted 342 – but sure any team will let you pass the ball all day in the first two thirds of the pitch. It counts for nothing unless you punish in the final third and PAOK just didn’t seem to offer too much in this department at all – apart from Giorgos Fotakis (wears 18, former Kilmarnock midfielder) who got a low shot away in the 16^th minute which was saved well by the Crete shot-stopper.

Even their set-pieces didn’t give huge cause for concern.

Pablo Garcia, the former Uruguay international (68 caps before retiring from international football back in 2007) –

wears number five – he’s their general, everything seemed to go through him on Sunday evening and he took most of the corners – but more often than not, they were high corners towards the penalty spot which just didn’t cause that many problems.

And they didn’t seem that pushed to vary it much, looping balls in rather than quick and with a bit of pace.  They had nine corners in total, 15 attempts at goal, just six on target and I only recall one of them forcing a decent save from the keeper, that being Fotakis’ effort in the first half.

He was taken off injured and replaced by Diego Arias (wears 85) after just 34 minutes so he may not feature on Thursday night.

And even free kicks, again I didn’t see much that would put the frighteners up Murray or Sives. If Paterson plays on the left though, he could have a tricky night against Etto because that lad is quick and he will give him more than a few headaches pace wise.

By and large, the team that started against Crete was the same as the one that started against Spurs when they made the trip to the Toumbas Stadium last month.

They are an ‘experienced’ team – the goalkeeper, Chalkias (didn’t start v Spurs) is 36, four of the starters on Sunday were aged 33, Italian Bruno Cirillo (wears 8), Brazilian defender Alves Maciel Lino (wears 16), Pablo Garcia (the midfield general) and Serbian attacking midfielder Vladimir Ivic (wears 21).

Ivic is a good passer of the ball but isn’t the quickest creature on two legs and to be fair, while he looked lively enough in the first half, he died a death in the second and ended up being substituted after 78 minutes as (number 99) Gionnou Apostolos, a young 21 year old striker came on to try to nick a late winner.

I was also looking forward to watching Greek striker Dimitri Salpingidis, who has over 50 caps to his name, but he was largely anonymous and was substituted after 70 minutes.

In total, FC PAOK commanded 71% possession after the 90 minutes (+5 added) and played 594 successful passes out 689. I’d say 90% of those failed passes occurred in the final third of the pitch which is probably why Michael O’Neill’s preferred 4-5-1 formation will work well against this side.

Pacey wingers like Dennehy, McCabe and Ricketts will cause them problems especially if Rovers can use the width of the pitch to pull their defenders out of their preferred central zone. Then gaps will occur and if they’ve conceded five goals in their opening six games, I’d be confident that Rovers can score because a lone man up top will usually end up 2v1 on the counter attack and if Rovers can get support up quick, then there will be serious potential to expose this side.

Rovers may well be 324^th in the UEFA rankings, and FC PAOK are 108th (Partizan Belgrade are 116^th if a bit of context is required) but I seriously think there are weaknesses in this PAOK side which can be exploited.

I honestly think Rovers can get something from this game!