At least the first few minutes were fun

Pretty much as I expected. An away loss to Galatasaray. Still down in the relegation zone and not a great deal of light ahead of us.

As the match was in Istanbul I decided to open my house to one and all to watch the match on the telly. I received an enormous response of absolutely nothing. Some grovelling at a party on Saturday night did end up with Spine and French Kanka Hande taking pity on me and so I thought it only right to whip up a curry for the only friends I have in Ankara.

Galatasaray 3 - 2 Genclerbirligi

Yumdidee Yum and the curry went down well. In fact we had hardly started when Isaac Promise got a cross in that wasn't cleared properly, the ball was sent left to Kerem Saras who I thought was about to send it on but instead had a shot. Luckily it went off a Galatasaray player and the keeper didn't have a chance. Three minutes in and 0-1 up. Cue delight from the Oz Kanka household.

It was also as good a time as any to send Little Oz Kanka to bed. At least he will be dreaming of that great goal and not the rest of the match.


So I enjoyed the first three minutes but from then on it was all pain.

Hats off to Galatasaray, they were playing a mean pressing game and out boys couldn't get the ball out of our own half.

Amateur analysis time: In the last few weeks we have been playing against teams set to defend. They weren't concerned with us having the ball in midfield and so we played it slow and boringly up to the front where we would inevitably lose it. Tonight, our lot looked in shock as Galatasaray actually tried to get the ball while we still had it in our own half. The result, after the goal we hardly got into the Galatasaray half at all. Pathetic.

So with bugger all position we managed to have two goals scored against us.

Half-time 2-1.

What with the wind and cold in Ankara this evening we relaxed our "no smoking inside" rule to one of "smoking allowed sort of near the kitchen balcony door" but still our discussions were downbeat.

Second half though and I thought we played a bit better. We played with the ball and had the best of the first five minutes and then Galatasaray, with their first attack of the second half, scored thanks to a deflection from Mr. Grape. Poor bugger, that was the second deflection off him that resulted in a goal. 3-1.

Galatasaray obviously took their foot off the accelerator at this point thus allowing us a bit more of the ball. There were a few nice combinations but quite frankly when the most talked about point amongst the crowd at the Oz Kanka household were the highlights in Genclerbirligi substitute Sedat Yesilkaya's hair, you know this was not a classic game of football.


A few highjinks towards the end as we were denied a clear penalty. And then Galatasaray's Song went in with a knee into Mehmet Cakir's back. It should have been a red, or at least a yellow. Instead he of the great streaks hair highlights got a yellow (appropriately hair-wise).

Okan Ozturk also managed to break his nose in a challenge but had to stay on as we had used our substitutions.

Then just towards the end one of our Serbian blokes, afraid I'm not sure if it was Storic or Petkovic, took a wonderful free kick. He sent it high and straight onto the head of Mr. Grape in the box who headed it toward goal and in, via a deflection. 3-2.

Final whistle a few seconds later and I hung my head in shame. We have had this blog going for a while now and yet I've yet to have the joy of heading off to Gulay's Galatasaray blog and just shouting abuse, well... I have shouted abuse there but never have I been able to gloat. One day, one day.