Late last night we confirmed the signing of Abdisalam Ibrahim from Manchester City.

Ibrahim is a young Norwegian (born Somalia) midfielder who has signed a contract for the next three and a half years.

He has been on loan at various clubs (most recently at Stromsgodset in Norway) and will now go on loan to Ergotelis until the end of the season.

I haven't been able to write any updates or articles in the last ten days for various reasons (mainly hospital reasons) so I thought I'd best do a summary. During this time, we've played two matches - 1 cup and 1 league, winning the first and drawing the second. The cup game was played at home in Karaiskaki roughly seven days ago and saw us thrash Asteras Tripolis by a 4-1 scoreline. We now hold a three goal advantage ahead of the return leg and will almost certainly be anough to see us advance.
At the weekend, we drew against Atromitos 0-0 away in Peristeri. It was a slightly disappointing result for us but we're still clear at the top of the league by a vast amount so it's hardly a result which will cause us any serious problems. The most important thing from the match was the return of Kostas Mitroglou after a lengthy injury period.

More serious however is the case with Dimitris Siovas. He had been injured recently and had to undergo surgery in the last week. This means that he will be out of action for at least two months and reduces us to only two centrebacks on the team - Avraam (also seemingly not fit) and Manolas. At the weekend we had to use Bong as an emergency centreback because of the lack of cover. The rumours have it that we are desperately hunting for cover and probably will be signing someone this month. I'm not sure who this will be but I hope that we don't get ripped off by other clubs now that they know about our problems. So it would seem that the move to offload Carl Medjani was a little premature but on the other hand he was slow and had the same turning circle as the Titanic.

So this minor problem aside, it hasn't been the worst ten daysever. This weekend we play Levadiakos in Karaiskaki, lets see how we do then.

Introduction
Todays match against Atromitos marked the end of a successfull season for Olympiakos and also the first of two times we would be playing Atromitos in the space of 7 days (we play them in the cup on Saturday 28th). The team we turned out was not the strongest available and several players were rested in advance of the cup. The game itself was more or less a dead match for us although we wouldn't particularly want to lose the match either.

First Half
The match didn't start brightly for us but we worked to take possession of the ball in the centre of the field, and after the first ten minutes we had started to control the game more confidently. Our first chance on goal came in the eleventh minute from a short range Diogo header which was unfortunately aimed directly at the keeper. In general, we were playing well and pressuring the opposition goalmouth but without scoring as yet and still susceptible to the odd Atromitos counter attack.

We continued with our aggressive gameplay, bringing the ball closer to the Atromitos net with Fetfatzidis having a fine effort saved off the line in the 30th minute. Fetfatzidis was also a very frustrating player to watch with his insistance of preferring to dribbling through three or four players rather than pass to a free teammate. We were almost caught out with an Atromitos counter attack in the 34th minute when Mitroglou broke through our defence but managed to recover when the same player slipped over in the box.
Nevertheless we continued with the pressure and came close again in the 41st minute with a shot from the box of the box courtesy of Fejsa which made the keeper stretch to push wide. This was the last action of note in the first half.

Second Half
The second half was only a minute old when we won a penalty for a foul on Diogo in the box. Fuster took the penalty but saw his effort saved (which was a good result since Diogo dived for the penalty in the first place). This did not stop us from keeping up the pressure on the Atromitos goal though and we kept a good attacking rate on the opposition area throughout the half. Fuster again came close in the 60th minute after an elaborate pass from Monje but saw his shot saved.
A minute later though and we scored the opening goal which we had been threatening all match. A free kick from 30 metres out was lobbed into the box, it eluded everyone apart from Marcano on the far side of the box. Marcano took the opportunity to shoot into the net from the tight angle and open the scoring.

Fetfatzidis scored the second goal after we managed to break through their defence with two players to their final defender. Giannis Fetfatzidis composed himself then lobbed the keeper beautifully to double the scoreline. Despite what I wrote earlier it was a lovely finish (but I still wish he'd pass more than trying to dribble umpteen opponents). Atromitos tried to instantly reply through Epstein and Tatos but luckily we stayed defensively firm to stop their chances (and even clear the ball off the line).

In the last period of the game, Atromitos came at us to try and get one goal back and save some face since they had been on the back foot for most of the match. We tended to be defending well but we were also penetrated a couple of times which led to Potouridis coming onto the pitch and replacing Makoun (giving us 5 at the back). We ended playing the game out in this formation and wound the clock down to the end of the match.

Summary
We had made a decent enough win after todays win although some of the plays did help remind of the thin nature of the squad and I still have some doubts on whether the likes of Diogo and Monje are good enough for anything but backup status. Fuster as well seemed wasteful on the ball and it may be that his injury earlier in the season has affected his gameplay even after regaining fitness. Still, it was a competent enough win and a good prelude to next weekends all important cup final.

Atromitos 0-2 Olympiakos
61' Marcano
66' Fetfatzidis

Olympiakos (Valverde) :- Carroll, Modesto, Mellberg , Papazoglou, Marcano, Fetfatzidis, Fejsa, Makoun (82' Potouridis), Monje, Fuster (75' Orbaiz), Diogo

We beat NO Patron in the last 16 phase of the Greek cup by a 13-2 scoreline and easily qualified for the next stage. The third period was the stage where we achieved dominance in the match and this was compounded by a super final period as well.
The final scores were :-

Olympiakos 13-2 NO Patron
1st Period : Olympiakos 2-1 NO Patron
2nd Period : Olympiakos 1-0 NO Patron
3rd Period : Olympiakos 6-1 NO Patron
4th Period : Olympiakos 4-0 NO Patron