Gencler's first away win for the season

Right then. A new coach and a win. All things better? Not for the fans... but on the park Gencler looked a lot better than recently.

Kayserispor 0 - 2 Genclerbirligi

Spine and me met up at the Alerta Pub for the Sunday's 2pm kick-off... and how glorious is a Sunday afternoon kick-off? Bloody glorious especially with the sun out and Alastair Cook out last ball just before kick-off.

I'm certainly not one who can talk but Genclerbirligi's new coach Umit Ozat certainly has belly on him. Anyway, on the field it looked like Ozat was making a few tweaks to put his stamp on the team.

Stancu was back into a purely attacking role and seemed to have Serdar up front with him (although Serdar also seemed to play in half-a-dozen positions throughout the match). Palitsevich was on (for Landel?) and Kamal Issah seemed to be playing in a fullback position.

As we often do Gencler came out attacking and Kayseri immediately started playing cynical fouls. None of the fouls were yellows but they were designed to wind us up. I feared that Irfan was going to blow his top... but he didn't. In the end the referee was so sick of these cynical fouls that in the second half he handed out 15 dozen yellows to Kayseri players.

We played well and could so easily have been a few up at half time. Stancu though seems to forgotten how to score. He messed up on two complete sitters... and on a couple of other occasions couldn't get to ball past the Kayseri keeper.

In the end he was subbed off and in came a few others including Muriqi and Matai. The latter got onto the scoresheet not long after coming on. It wasn't an amazing goal, just a good ball angled back from Khallali (I think). Muriqi skillfully left it and Matai punched it in off the far post.

A few minutes later Irfan took a lovely deceptive free kick which Serdar picked up in the box and nutmegged the keeper.

And that was that.

A good performance from Genclerbirligi, our first away win of the season.

You have to admit though. Kayseri are rubbish.