Istanbul Basaksehir

[Stalbansclaret]

Article about them in The Times football section today. The usual stuff about them benefitting from hefty sponsorship deals because of their owner’s family relationship to President Erdogan and their average gates of only 4,000 but I hadn’t realised they were 6 points clear at the top of the League .
Only 8 games to go so looks looks like we will be able to say we are better than the Champions of Turkey. They have only lost two all season and signed Robinho and Dember Ba in January to add to their collection of famous 30 plusers.

[theroyaldyche]

They are poor in a poor league

[Claret]

We're better than Olympiacos, too. How that shower of cheating twits got the better of us in Athens is a disgrace. They then rode their luck at the Turf.

Basaksehir were far and away the best team we've played competitively in Europe this century.

[Spike]

Olympic Argos was an horrible place

[wilks_bfc]

Olympic Argos was an horrible place

Agree. They tell you to go to “collection point A” then they bring your item to point B

[ClaretTony]

I thought in some ways that Basaksehir were a better side than Olympiacos. Still think we were so unlucky to go out too. Everything seemed to go against us.

[wilks_bfc]

As good as it might have been to qualify for the “proper” rounds, I dread to imagine the position we could be in now if we’d have progressed

[IanMcL]

We should have gone on!

Did not make Istanbul, however, Aberdeen, in the midst of vociferous Aberdonians was an experience and Athens great, other than being dumped at the end, with the metro closed.

[Blackrod]

I thought in some ways that Basaksehir were a better side than Olympiacos. Still think we were so unlucky to go out too. Everything seemed to go against us.

Agree with this.

[CrosspoolClarets]

Let’s not forget that Olympiacos knocked out Milan too and progressed to the knockouts, so logic would say they had more about them than we may think and we’re probably better than Basaksehir. I thought Fortounis was good although he wouldn’t make a PL player.

Fate definitely conspired against us but I felt we would have avoided that bad luck had we not played three reserve defenders in such a difficult stadium, in Long, Gibson, and Bardsley (Lowton was first choice at the time), all of whom made errors for goals or fired up their players with rash challenges leading to penalty claims (there was also the handball claim against Ward too but that was never a pen, they were still fired up from the Long one not given).

My point being, we cannot moan about things going against us when we set ourselves up to make that a more probable outcome. We will never know who has the better team.