GENCLERBIRLIGI – ESCAPE IN THEIR SIGHTS ??!!

 

Greetings Kankas and Kankies.

 

Well, if they do pull it off, it will be a truly remarkable achievement after looking dead and buried a few weeks ago    !!

 

There can be no denying their well deserved victory in Erzurum today, admittedly against a poor Erzurumspor team.

 

So, with only 2 matches remaining it is all down to who is going down with Denizlispor.     Erzurum, Altinordu, Gencler, Altay and Tuzla are all in the mix with only 5 points separating 2^nd bottom Erzurum and 6^th bottom Tuzla.

 

Anyway, back to today, and .............

 

Erzurumspor            0               GENCLERBIRLIGI           1

 

Team – Nurullah, Yasin, Ugur, Alperen, Thomas, Bugra, Enes, Muhammed, Erkan, Mete Kaan and Souleymane

 

Substitutes – Abdullah, Akabueze, Jaime, Ilker and Bangoura

 

For some reason, unknown to me, the match was played in The Bursa Stadium, and on that subject, my Man of the Match award goes to the Groundsman who presented a perfect playing surface, but unfortunately the standard of football didn’t do it justice   !!!

 

Both teams having sized each other up, it took until the 15^th minute for a serious goal attempt when Mete Kaan shot just post the right post.

 

Then, almost on the half time whistle, Muhammed was brought down in the box with a clumsy and blatant push in the back.     The referee pointed straight to the spot and did not consult VAR   !!    Bugra sent a ground shot to the left with the goalkeeper diving in the opposite direction

 

It was mostly all Gencler attacking in the 1^st half with Mete Kaan in particular causing the Erzurum defence all sorts of problems with his trickery and speed, but nothing much to say about the final efforts in the final 3^rd   !

 

Erzurum was having difficulty stringing passes together and losing possession easily.    They had only one shot on goal in the 1^st half and it wasn’t on target   !

 

The 2^nd half was similar with Erzurum unable to fashion an equaliser,     However, they did manage to put one shot on target in the 46^th minute, but Nurullah made a great save when the ball seemed to be heading for the top right.

 

Erzurum’s cause wasn’t helped when Estrella had a rush of blood to the head.    Firstly, in the 55^th minute he was shown a yellow for dissent, and then 5 minutes later he received a 2^nd yellow ....... and RED .......... when he blatantly pulled back an attacker near the half way line.     Silly boy   !!!

 

Gencler had no problem running the match down, but there was a slight scare near the end when Erzurum scored, but there was a hand-ball before the player shot and scored which was spotted by the referee and the VAR Assistant.

 

So, as I said, there are only 2 matches remaining and next up for Gencler in a home match against 3^rd top of the league Sakaryaspor on Tuesday 16 May.     It goes without saying that this has extra importance for both teams   !!!

 

As always, watch this space for the outcome.

 

All the best from Eski Kanka Jim