The difficult balance exercise for Almeida

At the start of the second round, AEK is where it needs to be, judging by placement rather than previous results, to be able to retain the title until the end, like last year. Of course, if you look more closely at the results, he could well be 4-5 points away from second place.

The league is beautiful and exciting, it is right to point out the efforts of the small and medium-sized teams to keep interest high by taking points away from the big ones, however, the losses that AEK had with teams that were at the bottom of the league are ranked, no one has had another one so far. And if she hadn’t scored 10 of her 31 points in games with the other four in the top five, things would have been much worse for her.

The turn that the game took against Panaitolikos, a game that seemed over from the 14th minute but was never won, caused discontent and uncertainty ahead of today’s game in Serres. It makes perfect sense for this to happen as against teams of this level the Union is the one that consistently beats them.

Villages reappearing decimated, with players constantly playing in the final games and failing. So with additional pressure for those who were unable to complete the mission in either Amsterdam or Agrinio.

The big problem is of course something else

Almeida is currently able to verify many facts and events. He tries his own no-nonsense approach to getting the team back to last year’s performance and energy levels, but in doing so he has to contend with a series of injuries and absences far beyond what he had calculated, although he knows that his method will make a big difference to the burden.

He’s trying to do that with players who didn’t have as much enhanced or complex roles last year – which is now born out of necessity – and with others who will have to play more than he originally expected. Many conclusions are drawn from this process: the competence of the players, the endurance of the work style, but also the need to reduce the average age, one of the reasons that apparently contribute to the frequent injuries.

One could say that Almeida is trying to maintain balance in very difficult conditions, because it will not force him to change the way he works, but to figure out how to continue doing so with the lowest possible cost to the team. This means that AEK’s direction will change in the coming transfer periods, of course not overnight.

In this way, the coach obviously has to find a way not to lose contact with the top, i.e. not to give AEK the rights that the other competitors are waiting for in order to break away from them. Difficult balance between the team playing in this style and beating absentees and opponents, but that’s the coach’s way and it will stay that way until the end.