Başbakan Ramazan

"Stancu just doesn't seem good enough up front," said @spinesideburn at the Beer Bus before Monday night's Genclerbirligi v Eskisehirspor match. So little faith did Steve have that he didn't even bother to actually come to game, preferring to curl up on the sofa at home. Needless to say Stancu scored two top goals tonight.

Genclerbirligi 2 - 0 Eskisehir

I had no idea that Swedish people were so proud of their Viking history. Apparently the prime minister sends out a congratulatory note to all Swedes on the date considered to be the anniversary of the "Stuffing of Jorvik" (York) from the year 950 or something. Such a violent history makes it all the more strange that all Swedes are given a certificate on graduation from high school that qualifies them to be election monitors in any third world country, including Scotland! No wonder democracy is doing so well.

The Swedes

Anyway, that is what I think I heard from the four Swedish blokes who showed up at the Beer Bus, along with @spinesideburn, for pre-match discussions.

Indian summer weather, and a fair bit of pollution, meant that it certainly wasn't cold at the 19 Mayis Stadium for the Monday night 8pm KO. Which brings me to my next rant.

When I was a kiddy football matches kicked off at 3pm on a Sunday. ALL football matches kicked off at 3pm on a Sunday. A wonderful time for a footy match. The weather was always good at 3pm. The meat pies were warm and the cheer leaders ugly.  
I know we can't go back to those good ole days. Television determines everything and I accept that we are going to have matches on a Friday night, or a Monday night.

But now I get pissed off and angry because I can't for the life of me figure out why the TFF would schedule three, 3, uç, tre, THREE matches for a Monday night 8pm kick off.

Why couldn't the TFF have had our match on Saturday or Sunday? It isn't as if our Monday night match would have got many viewers on the telly. The Gencler v Eskisehir match is the closest we have to a derby nowadays (a bit over an hour away on the high speed train). So why, why, make us play on a Monday night making it so difficult for both home and especially away fans to get to the stadium?

Having said that there was a decent Eskisehir crowd tonight. Mainly students it looked like.

But the Eskisehir team didn't really show up.

Gencler did though and it wasn't long until Stancu had us 1-0 up with a greatly strike in the 7th minute.

And then we played... er... not too badly. This was a new Gencler. Grosso was great in midfield. We were making decent attacks, our defence was holding nicely, Ramazan in goal had little to do.

Half-time and none of us could see Eskisehir winning it. Thing was that before the match you could have got very good odds on Eskisehir absolutely thrashing us.

Second half and again Genclerbirligi were in control. We sang and sang and the team seemed to lift. Then the second came with Stancu again simply smashing it.      
 
From then on Gencler merely played counter-attacking football while Eskisehir desperately tried to get something back.

They couldn't.

I can't really explain it. We seem to be playing like a decent team. Is it all because of the new coach "Şifo" Mehmet?

I don't care. In the end the Swedes and me left the stadium happy having seen another violent massacre... er... football victory.

Steve later texted me to say that he had had a lovely snooze. Bless.