Excellent start........not

So the first match of the second half of the season was a bit of a disaster for Galatasaray.

A 2-0 loss at the hands of Sivasspor who also stretched the gap between GS and themselves at the top of the Lig to 4 points.

A look at the starting line up shows the state of the squad:

De Sanctis, Volkan, Emre Aşık, Hakan Balta, Ayhan, Mehmet Topal, Barış Özbek, Ümit Karan, Arda, Milan Baros.

No Emre Gungor, Meira, Servet in defence, no Lincoln or Linderoth in midfield, no Hasan, Kewell or Nonda in attack.

And then of course Umit got himself red carded after which Sivas socred both their goals. Given the fact that te conditions are so bad at the hole in the arse of the country that is Sivas I am not sure why the TFF allows matches to happen there as it is advantage to Sivas. Also teams that play their later in the second half get the benefit of civilized conditions.

Either they should buy floodlights, install underpitch heating or they should be forced out of the SuperLig or should be forced to play all their winter matches in Antalya and level conditions for everyone.

Plus any city that allows a kebab shop to be opened in a building where arson was committed and people killed is just sick!!

Cup of cheer

So after the disappointment of the Radyospor Cup in Antalya the team bounced back with a healthy 4-2 win over Malatyaspor in the Fortis Cup on Saturday.

Emre Gungor managed to get himself sent off within 12 minutes of getting on the pitch at the start of the second half, which was not a clever thing to do but the team managed without him and squeezed out the win thanks to 2 red cards to Malatya.

SuperLig action starts again on January 24th with an away match at Sivas. This is going to be a hard game especially with the weather in Sivas at this time of the year. Still a draw or a win would help with the momentum from the end of the first half of the season.

Back to business?

Ok so in the middle of the winter break from football what do the TFF decide to do....that's right play the Fortis Cup Matches. My question is that if the weather is okay and conditions generally good enough to play these games why not continue the SuperLig Programme. It seems to be the same every year that the winter break is completed and then the weather turns really bad and games get postponed etc.....madness.

Anyway Galatasaray are in Izmir today to take care of Altay. A win would put us top of the group on 7 points and in good position to advance to the next round of matches. However with the teams continued existence in the UEFA CUp as Turkeys sole representative team I am not sure how much a priority the Fortis Cup match and then the meaningless Radyospor Tournament matches against Beyer Leverksuen are. Given the teams injury luck this year I would prefer them to concentrate on the SUperLIg and UEFA and then use some of the less regular players in these Cup games.

As for the UEFA Cup we will be up against Girondins Bordeaux who are managed by one of the most cultured defenders ever in Laurent Blanc. Currently sitting second in the French Ligue and playing some good football they will be difficult to get passed. We played them in the Champs League a couple of season agoa with little success and they have had more stability since then than we have. Anyway on the assumption we have a full healthy squad there is no reason to fear them.