Season over?

Well it seems that despite the fact that Gerets has signed an extension this has not had the desired effect of settling the players down. A loss last weekend, knocked out of the Cup during the week and now a loss to the referee....I mean Besiktas today. Contrary to last season the team is now playing worse after the winter break than before and I really cannot see any way for Galatasaray to win the SuperLig this season. Results since the restart of the season are WDWLDL which is not the form needed.

This was a strange team that Gerets put out for such an important match no Song, Ilic, Inamoto, Hakan, Orhan Ak or Hasan Sas.

Having said that the team played relatively well although Necati was in one of his more profligate moods today as he should have had a couple of goals in the first half after good work from Arda. One thing that left a bad taste in the mouth though was the play acting of the Besiktas defenders especially the slap head. A couple of times he was beaten and a GS player was in very good position only for a free kick to be awarded against them as the slap head was rolling around pretending to be hurt even though replays showed no foul. That is cheating, pure and simple but with todays referee, Firat Aydinus, Besiktas were rewarded for all of their underhand tactics.

On the balance of play I believe a draw should have been the result, certainly CimBom were not good enough to win but I also don't think Besiktas really deserved to win especially with the rather dodgy penalty they were awarded. Apart from the fact that Bobo the clown was pushing Mehmet in the back handball should be hand to ball and the replays clearly showed this was not the case. What makes it harder to take was the rather obvious foul on Umit a couple of minutes that resulted in nothing........as I have said time and time again the referees in Turkey are poor and inconsistent, I don't believe they are corrupt rather they are just crap and easily influneced by the home crowd.

Great result in Liverpool today, serves the scousers right for being so arrogant.....but again the ref was not exactly consistent.....Carragher gets a yellow for a studs up, late, high vicious challenge on Rooney and Scholes gets a red for swinging and missing at Alonso who was clearly dragging him back and was already on a yellow. Todays ref was also infliuenced by the Liverpool crowd so its not just Turkey....