Olympiacos has been training since the start of the season because it has been difficult. He signed 18 players in the summer and released just as many. He made the first transfer in mid-June and the last on September 30th. He has changed three managers in two and a half months, with Mitchell now having one side for the league and one for Europe as many good footballers don’t qualify for the Europa League.

All this creates special conditions for him, and his management is not easy. It’s not easy for the Spanish coach these days to make difficult decisions and leave some players behind.

Because the selection and list of footballers in Europe is specific. How do you cut off a player who is eligible to be kicked out of the 20-team from league games but wants him available for Europa League games?

Mitchell will train on Friday (7/10) Rendis, Hames, Bakabu, Samaseku, Fortune, Aguibu Kamara and De la Fuente, which (at least the top 5) he would like to have available in the game with the Azerbaijani team.

The approach to the game, the system and the line-up would be different. However, if no work is done. And the Spaniard has a lot of work ahead of him, trying to bring the Piraeus team back to normal conditions.

On Thursday evening (6/10), Olympiacos didn’t have a terrible and terrible team against them. But Qarabag goes with the waters and the unwritten rules of football.

It has a solid core of players who have played multiple seasons together, running, pushing up, tagging, scoring and building a good roster. And this set won the credits. Because the red and white have several quality footballers, but have not yet become a team.

To become a team again

The first wish for Olympiacos is to become a team again. And for that, everyone must first put the “we” over the “I”. Players should practice their self-criticism, acknowledge their mistakes and lower their heads and work harder to lead Olympiakos out of the maze they find themselves in.

It is also evident that there is a great lack of self-confidence. Successive bad results in Europe have unsettled some players. Olympiacos concede goals easily while achieving a goal with a lot of effort and sweat. This goes through the team unconsciously.

If you can’t keep a clean sheet on defense and you can’t score goals easily, you won’t be able to get the result you want. And if a team doesn’t win, they can’t build their mentality. The Reds and Whites created a few chances against Qarabag but had poor finishes.

The Piraeus team has gone 12 consecutive European games without a win, nine this season and three last season. During this time he had 0-3 against Atalanta, 0-4 against Maccabi Haifa, 0-3 against Freiburg and 0-3 against Qarabag at the Georgios Karaiskakis Stadium.

All this in a stadium where football giants have bowed in the past, from Liverpool, Manchester United and Real to Juventus, Atlético, Arsenal and Dortmund.

He risked it with Karabagh, but it didn’t work out

As for the game against Qarabag, a lot can be said about Mitchell’s systems and changes. The Spaniard wanted to risk it after 60 minutes, but it didn’t work out. But the problem lies deeper.

When Embila is Olympiakos’ highest performing player playing as a stopper, it means there is something wrong with everything else.

One could argue that it comes down to quality, focus, determination and experience, all of which the Frenchman, unlike some other players, possesses to the full.

Game-wise, perhaps Mitchell needed to be more suspicious of system changes, faces, and internal player movement in the last half hour of the game.

On the one hand, because Olympiacos’ performance usually falls off after 60′ in the theoretically more difficult games, which require more runs, and on the other hand, because Qarabag often scores in the last half hour of their games.

Olympiacos conceded three goals within 18 minutes (68th-86th), and in the immediately preceding game the Azerbaijani team had scored three goals within 12 minutes against Nantes (60th-72nd).

Individual mistakes cost money

On the other hand, the Spanish coach did not expect so many individual mistakes to be made in just a few minutes. On the first goal, Vrsaliko was not pulled in time to sideline Ovusou.

In the second, Cisse threw it in high technique, losing the ball in the middle and with the entire defense exposed. And on the third goal, Reabchiuk failed to score properly, so Sedayev had to shoot.

Marcelo’s debut at Olympiakos was missed in the middle of the action in second and third place. Not ready to compete just yet, the Brazilian entered the race when Mitchell decided to shuffle the deck heavily.

Now the red-whites have to raise their heads, because in two 24 hours follows the championship game against OFI (8/10) in Crete and in six days the game against Karabagh (13/8) in Azerbaijan.

View game night: