The horror of PAOK’s defeat and appearance at the OPAP Arena fell, as is usually the case, on the coach or otherwise Razvan Lucescu.

The truth is that it’s hard to pay a coach in Greece 1.5 million euros and see a team that has been champions in recent years sitting in fifth place and 14 points from first place, while we’re only on day 10.

Lucescu gets hit from everywhere

At the moment the Romanian technician is being attacked from everywhere. He has been harshly criticized by journalists, most of whom dislike him for his behavior and the controversial statements he has made frequently and against all groups.

Lucescu is not loved by Olympiakos’ friends AEK Panathinaikos and now that his team is not doing well, he becomes an easy target for PAOK fans as well. It got to the point where he entered the field earlier and walked around the field and shared as if he had committed a crime. An event that has been compared to the behavior of Vitor Pereira, making gestures on the avenue, pulling the nets and wires.

There were mistakes in the build-up, but was there a more correct footballing approach?

He was regularly judged very harshly for daring to get his players in the process of building an orthodox game from below against AEK’s pressing.

Its players really had a problem under pressure from AEK and made mistakes in the initial development work. But is there anyone who thinks they would have had a different fate with the 11 that PAOK fielded had they gone with a different logic?

That is, in the scenario where Koulierakis and Kotarski were instructed to chase the ball, play long passes, and not try to break the pressing by playing dandas with their backs, as was successfully done in Karaiskakis, would PAOK achieve a result.

Would he hit that Gacinovic-Garcia AEK in the wings with Lucescu’s cut Rafa Suarez and Sastre? Would it hit his defensive four, with an attacking trio of Costantelia, Narey, ten Augusto and Oliveira leading the charge?

Mind you, Lucescu is a coach, he has something to teach. Unless he asks to go into a low-build game and play the Dandas card, he’ll have to find another weapon. I’m wondering if there is another weapon that PAOK could use besides the quality of Dandas. If only there was another football plan that Lucescu could use based on the squad he brought onto the field.

A plan that would lead PAOK to a result against this AEK, I personally believe that it did not exist.

Could he go into the space game with Oliveira in front and Augusto behind him?

They easily see what happened and ask for something else. Also, based on what happened, you easily conclude that what we saw was wrong.

But I’m wondering which one is the right one. It would be a right choice to go with Oliveira in front, who plays permanently at the back, without a solid midfielder, but with Augusto, who is a maximum for the position “8” and plays at “10”, and on the left the inexperienced Costantelia play in space with big balls? If you don’t have attackers that PAOK doesn’t have that are capable of going into space play, how are you going to ask your team to play with long transfers?

From what I know so little about football, it ensures that the opponent gains consistent possession and builds attacks from scratch.

One would say, and rightly so, that it is better to play with long passes and lose the ball at the level of the cross than in your own penalty area, as happened twice in the first half and from the second AEK’s first goal came. But even in the first case, no one guarantees you that you will get a result.

Lucescu has to justify his salary somehow

So the question is what do we ask of the coach. With Razvan Lucescu not having a squad to win a league, how exactly should he do it? Should he teach his football players anti-football in case they happen to get a score?

But this logic is short-sighted and gets nowhere. Finally, as a highly paid coach, he has to find an argument to justify his salary, the fact that he is the highest paid in Greek football.

A championship he will not claim, he has not been given the right line-up to achieve it, just some talented lads and most of them in central defense positions. If he followed the logic of passing the ball to the opponent and playing the drums, he would be unsuitable for the job because he wouldn’t have anything to teach these kids.

Kotarski, Koulierakis, Tsaoussis, Lyratzis, Dandas, Kostantelias and the rest of the young players PAOK has in their squad wouldn’t get the least bit of coexistence with him and the club would stay far from the championship anyway.

In a year when you can’t claim titles, you have to try and play something. Lucescu knows slow possession football with lots of passes, he has Dadas as a weapon in his squad and he works the build-up from below which, if you learn it well at some point, can break the pressing and turn the opponent’s weapon into a disadvantage.

The positions of the three central midfielders

He also wants to have Kurtic in the XI who can give him goals that he can’t get from the forward position as he doesn’t have a forward to give him the easy goal and he goes to the following logic.

He builds PAOK to learn to play with attacks from deep, uses Dandas on the ‘6’ to get the ball first in development, and Augusto high to cover the runs Kurtic doesn’t have. Another coach would either put Kurtic higher or drop Dadas and Augusto low.

Lucescu has wanted the Brazilian midfielder, who has stronger defensive qualities, to tie his team behind the striker since last year. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t. The argument that it would be better for the chemistry at the center of PAOK if the three midfielders had different roles than they currently have is probably correct.

They will live with their mistakes

But Lucescu cannot be so criticized for trying to break the pressure with build-up play from deep, having a slow striker or because his 19-year-old stopper made mistakes. At PAOK they decided to release a young goalie, young stopper, young defenders and a 6 man so they live with their mistakes but have to work on something specific.

The football that brought the double against the ailing Olympiakos even through individual mistakes by the opponent is the same football that was confidently defeated by this year’s AEK.

Lucescu cannot suddenly be judged insufficient

So that we don’t get too crazy, Lucescu hasn’t come to PAOK now. He has proven many times that he can beat AEK if you give him a good squad. So many years he had a better team and won them, now that he was given an obviously underdog team he lost, things are simple and it’s not possible that with an obviously underdog team it’s not the manager’s fault.

Not a popular item

He cannot suddenly be judged unable to manage such a game. He currently has no friends. I know the article is unpopular. The Olympiacos, the Aktzides, the Panathinaikos don’t like him because he’s beaten them many times and whenever he loses he’s really argumentative, he wasn’t interested in doing publicity with them.

The friends and journalists closest to PAOK can’t accept that for the eleven they sent, for the line-up they have, it’s no surprise that they lost 2-0 to AEK, but that they even beat that Olympiakos. For this squad, 4th place is an upper limit and if it is conquered at the end, it is an achievement.

Pablo Garcia

There is also a large percentage who would like to see Garcia return to the PAOK bench. He sees that Lucescu is a coach, not a magician, and he can influence the team to a certain extent and they don’t judge him realistically. There’s also the logic here that if I finish fifth I should have the pleasure of seeing my beloved Pablo on my bench.

But Lucescu is not to blame for that any more than he is to blame for this squad not being able to push PAOK past fourth place. The Romanian coach is to blame and pay for not protecting his profile and making sure he has good relations with the other big teams in Athens and it’s difficult in our country to cash in on the achievements from another big team , which he scored with PAOK .