Olympiacos boss Jose Luis Mendiliber has blasted his players and claimed they struggle to play in front of their own fans ahead of their Europa League showdown with Rangers...despite winning at the weekend.
Rangers travel to Greece this week for the fourth game in the group after wins against Malmo and Steaua Bucharest and a defeat against Lyon.
Olympiacos warmed up for the game with a narrow 2-1 home victory against Panserraikos, but Spanish boss Mendiliber - who led the Athens club to Europa Conference League glory last season - was very unhappy at his side's display.
He said: "I didn't enjoy the game at all. We gave our opponents far too many chances. If they had equalised and got a draw, we couldn't have complained.
"It seems to be the norm for us to struggle in our own stadium this season. We didn't do anything well. Even when we went ahead, we kept doing stupid things.
"All week, we worked hard in training and on the pitch we did the complete opposite.
Read more:
- Emotional comeback: Ferguson thrilled by ovation on Bologna return
- Callum McGregor's inspiring 'do it in style' semi-final objective
"It's the players' fault, it's my fault too. I'm the boss so it starts with me. I am as much to blame.
"I choose the starting team and choose our tactics and I haven't convinced our players about the way they should play.
"I wish I could explain what went wrong. You read the stats and we had four times the possession, a lot of chances, a lot of shots, but on the other hand you make so many mistakes and we kept giving the ball to the opponent.
"To almost not win the game with those kinds of figures is incomprehensible."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here