Genclerbirligi climb to 9th place

It was a tired and forlorn Trabzonspor that took to the field in Ankara last night. Genclerbirligi took no pity on them.

Genclerbirligi 3 - 1 Trabzonspor

At the Soul Pub downtown Alex and me were joined by Kevin for his first footballing experience in Turkey. And what a match he got, four goals and a big win for the home side.

A few beers and some grub and then off to a relatively empty 19 Mayis. We struggle to get fans to games and putting matches on a Monday night just makes it even harder.

We were whining about this when Irfan took a corner about 40 seconds in... and goalllll! It was Palitsevich with a wonderful header. That was quick.

Already one-nil up and I still hadn't even figured out who was in our team. Hopf was out with an injury. Hleb was on the bench recovering from one (he came on for the last 20 minutes or so). Our captain Ahmet Calik and key defender Kulusic were also both out (I think it was due to cards).

It may have been a weaker team on paper but it certainly didn't look like it on the pitch. Trabzon didn't manage a shot on goal in the first half due to some excellent organised defensive lines from Gencler... and on the counter attack we looked extremely dangerous.

After quite a few attacks and some nice footy all round, Hakan Aslantas sent an across field pass to the right wing, a short pass to Campos who turned quickly into the box centred it and Stancu blasted it in from a couple of metres out. Nice.

Things were all going swimmingly and got even better early in the second half when Landel got onto the end of a through ball. He couldn't control it properly though and it looked like he had wasted a good chance to have shot from not far out. Then came along former Gencler defender Aykut Demir who took out the stick-thin Landel. The referee pointed to the spot and gave Demir a yellow. Irfan stood up, had the shot and goal.

It was about this stage that Trabzon decided to actually play some football and we got about 10 minutes of them trying. It resulted in a goal for them but the rest of the match was all ours.

A win against one of the Big Four is always good... to totally dominate them and get the win is even better.

POST MATCH: Along with all the usual stuff, Gencler coach Ibrahim Üzülmez said that he wants to continue at Gencler and that he will sit down with Cavcav to sort things out at the end of the season.