European Alphabet Challenge – 1st half of season 2037/38 with Panathinaikos.
Hello and welcome back to another post of my European Alphabet Challenge, where I am currently living the life in the debt-ridden Greece with Panathinaikos. After a short pre-season and not many signings, how did the first half of our season go?
It was a poor start but we’ve managed to turn it around and it’s looking good for the rest of the season for Panathinaikos. We started off by getting through EL qualifying by knocking out Cypriot team Omonia and Montenegrin side Buducnost, and we did well in the EL group stages as we beat Dinamo Moscow home and away, 4-0 and 2-1 respectively, as well as beating Jablonec 4-1 and drawing with them 3-3 – although we lost to Palermo 4-2 and drew with them again, 3-3. In the Greek Cup we also made it through, as we knocked out Kordeliou 8-1 on aggregate in the 3rd round. Into the Greek Superleague though and it started poorly as we failed to win in our first 4 games, losing 2 of them before we beat Panaitolikos 3-0. After drawing with Atromitos we smashed Veroia 6-0 and we carried that good form on as we got a vital 3-2 win over AEK Athens before drawing 0-0 with Olympiakos. We then went away to Xanthi and won 4-1 before the best result so far saw Felipe score a hattrick in a vital 3-1 win over leaders Olympiakos to draw ourselves closer to the top of the league after such a poor start. After the Olympiakos game we won our final two league games of the 2037 3-0 and 5-1.
So after those fixtures we sit in 2nd place – but 7 points behind leaders Olympiakos. We must win away at Olympiakos if we are to win the Greek Superleague this season and we must hope that Olympiakos lose a few games, as well as the fact we need to be consistent as we are only 3 points ahead of PAOK in 3rd and 4 points ahead of AEK in 4th. Meanwhile Veroia are bottom with 0 points from 15 games so far – and a -51 GD.
