AEK looking for derby win
AGONAsport’s AEK contributor, Greg Gavalas, talks about the importance of victory for AEK in Sunday’s Athenian derby against Panathinaikos.
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It has been a while since AEK registered a derby win, over 19 months in fact, with the last win coming against Panathinaikos in April 2018. Then, AEK won 3-0 thanks to a brace of goals from Sergio Araujo and another from Rodrigo Galo.
Amazingly, six of the players that started in that match will most likely play this weekend. More notably, the back four would have been the same as that team from 2018, however, after recent behavioral issues, Ognjen Vranjes will not be available for selection due to a one-month suspension handed from AEK President Dimitris Melissanidis.
Vranjes will be replaced by Marios Oikonomou who was initially ruled out by injury, but he fully recovered and is expected to start alongside veteran Dmytro Chygrynskiy. As a result, AEK will have a slow central pairing - this could be an issue. Panathinaikos are a young, fast team with the likes of Tasos Chatzigiovanis, Ioannis Bouzoukis, Christos Donis, and Ghayas Zahid in the midfield. They have caused the “big” teams issues and almost ended PAOK’s undefeated run last week. This will surely be an interesting game and challenge for the Kitrinomavri.
Both Michalis Bakakis and former Panathinaikos left-back, Niklas Hult, will return from their injuries to line up at the wing-backs. Hult will be an improvement on an underperforming Helder Lopez who didn’t look like his old self in the last couple of matches. This could be due to a lack of gametime after a lengthy stint off from injury. With Zahid and Chatzigiovanis running at the two wing-backs, it will make for a great contest.
I am sure AEK coach, Nikos Kostenoglou, will go with a similar approach to what he did with Atromitos and have Andre Simoes start in the middle with Nenad Krsticic along-side him - although Greek International Kostas Galanopoulos could start there also.
The great news for AEK is that captain, Petros Mantalos, is now fit and ready to go. He will no doubt join Nelson Oliveira and Marko Livaja in attack. The Croatian striker has not been as influential or effective as he was earlier in the season, but AEK will need him back to his best form if they are to win this Athenian derby.
I still have mixed opinions on Oliveira. He is particularly slow and to my surprise, a poor shot executor on some rather simple situations where I was expecting to see more from a player of his caliber. However, many more games are set to be played to prove us doubters wrong.
If AEK are to have a good chance of winning this derby, Kostenoglou needs to start Christos Albanis over Milos Deletic and Daniele Verde. Deletic is a mid-table team player and we have seen over the last month, a real lack of penetration from him - an inability to get behind opposition defenses. On the other hand, Albanis can do this.
As for Verde, I am not sure what the hype from Nikos Lymberopoulos was to get him. The Italian has been rather ineffective in games and like Deletic, does not really create danger for the opposition. That being said, I do think he has more to offer than the former Larissa wide man.
The last two games of this derby have ended in goalless draws. The last time the Greens beat AEK was in late May 2017 with a Sabastian Leto penalty.
The return of Mantalos (starting), Bakakis, and Hult will be a big boost for AEK. In what I think will be a very tight contest, the Greens are a fast team that can play on the break while AEK are a holding team with better attacking players potentially lining up from the start of the game.
What is for sure and with the new format of the Super League, both teams will be out to win this fixture. Panathinaikos will have to do it with coach, Giorgos Donis, in the stands after being suspended for his actions in last week’s derby in Thessaloniki.
