We got the three points here. It wasn't a pretty three points but, at this point in time, I'll take them.

First, the video of our goal, set up beautifully by Nemeth.

Some good aspects to mention about our play today, but overall, it was not an impressive victory.

Our defence today was not the greatest, and Majstorovic and Juanfran in particular were quite poor.

D.C. United got a rare road win and toughed out a 1-0 win in Chicago to improve the teams chances at gaining the MLS playoffs. United had not won in over four months on the road and perhaps this newfound confidence will spur the Black and Red from this point forward.

Yep, you guessed it, another derby on the first matchday of the season. And AEK will once again be one of the teams playing in the derby, just like last year. And who will our opponent be? Yep, its Olympiakos!

The game is still a while away but Im sure the likes of Bajevic, Blanco, Scocco, and Kyrgiakos are waiting for their revenge after our unfortunate loss in the Greek Cup Final of 2009.

Just as promised, even if it is a day behind normal schedule here. Plenty of solid goals this past week in Major League Soccer. I particularly love some of the combinations in plays like the Columbus game between Jason Garey and Steven Lenhart.

By the way, what was with Rob Stone's Max Bretos call on the DeRo goal?

The club from Fylis who came back from a 3-0 defecit to tie AEK 3-3 earlier this season almost got away with a another draw, this time at OAKA. However, youngster Panagiotis Tachtsidis came to the rescue in extra time and salvaged the three points for AEK. Tachtsidis, who is only 18 (he scored on the [.

After the Fire's brilliant comeback in Columbus Saturday, news of some strange goings on with Blanco and referee Jair Marrufo.

Both Blanco and the ref were under investigation due to the fact that Marrufo accepted a signed jersey from Blanco in the locker room after the game. We all know that it is against the rule for ref's to accept gifts and this morning US Soccer decided to take action, dropping Marrufo from this weeks round of MLS matches.

A huge win for us, absolutely incredible! So many good things to say, its going to take a while. I believe AEKBaltimore recorded the game since it was on in the US as well, so hopefully he will have some more comments as well.

First off, let me just repeat that once more. AEK 1-0 Benfica.

Well, after a long sixteen game wait, AEK finally got its first away win of the season, as well as its first back to back wins. The team's performance overall was not wonderful, especially not compared to the performance they displayed against PAOK only a week earlier. In fact, the football that the team played brought [.

We lined up like this: Djebbour Blanco Scocco Ensaliwa Pelletieri Kafes Juanfran Georgeas Kyrgiakos Majstorovic Saja Alves came in for Juanfran, who seems to have picked up an injury, in the 24th minute.  Edinho came in for Ensaliwa and around the 63rd minute and Manduca relieved Georgeas in the 77th.

Well, alot has been going on with this secret letter which was released earlier this week regarding the financial status of AEK. There is so much to say that it cannot all be discussed in here, and, unfortunately, there are no links in english that I can find relating to the story.

Basically, Melissanidis will have to take over soon or the team might not make it through this.

Yet another big win against our northern rivals, this time with a scoreline of 3-1.

Videos below:

It was a fairly confident win against PAOK this time with goals coming from Djebbour, Blanco, and Scocco. There were some questionable calls from the ref (including a red for PAOK, which I agree with but could have been avoided by PAOK) and some calls not made (including a hand ball from Kafes which wasn't called).

So, we lost this one but it was not at all a bad performance by our team, and was definately the best game we've seen AEK play all pre-season. First of all, goal highlights.

Unfortunately I haven't seen a video with more highlights uploaded yet, but we had many chances, just as many if not more than Boca.

Unfortunately, Dasan Robinson cannot be the fall guy for this one. After his late heroics/ complete stupidity against Colorado, I can't remember that last time that I wanted kiss something and kill it at the same time, I thought the Fire were in for a long night against DC United.

With only 3 healthy defenders, the Fire entrusted the LB duties to Mike Banner, the second year youngster who weighs maybe a buck-thirty and spends most of his time playing as an attacking midfielder.

So, our first home game of the season (after the match against Olympiakos was cancelled), and it could prove to be a fairly difficult one. Iraklis have a strong squad and I believe they have the potential to cause trouble to any team in the league.

Nonetheless, our squad is also strong as well now so I believe we can take the win.

Some important comments to mention about yesterday's match.

Firstly, our to team put on a good performance. Even now more can be improved on. but it was a solid game for the most part with some enjoyable football.

This is definately a good result. On paper, Iraklis are certainly not a pushover this year with some pretty impressive signings being made for them over the summer.

45 minutes in and we're leading this one 1-0! Blanco scored a penalty (certainly the correct call) to put us up and we now are in a great position and the win is definately possible.

Conditions are terrible in Minsk. It is extremely cold (near zero degrees celcius) and the pitch is extremely wet.

Well, our night went from good to about as bad as it could get. As you can see from the post below we were up 1-0 at half time.

The second half started and early on Majstorovic gets his second yellow and is sent off and Bate tie the game. So, one of our key players is sent off, the pitch condition is deteriorating (and it was disgusting to begin with) and we were loosing the control over the game we had before.

After a pretty good performance by AEK, we are up 1-0 from a Manduca header off of a fine cross from Karabelas. Some great chances for us, including one with Manduca and one with Blanco. Ergotelis started stronger but we picked up the tempo around the 20th minute and we are now dominating for the most part.

So, as is typical with AEK, we blow an early 1-0 lead and end up with a draw (today, the match against PAS, the Cup Final, the match with BATE).

My stream today was poor quality, so I can't comment as much as I could have. But basically what we saw throughout the match was that we had many chances, yet we only scored one of them.

Fue la pregunta que nos hacíamos algunos mientras el partido transcurría y el medio campo del Tri parecía no tener dueño, un voluntarioso Leandro Augusto hacía lo que estaba en él para poner orden pero no era suficiente. En lo personal recordé la labores que realizaba Luis Pérez hasta el torneo anterior cuando como contención buscaba [.

So, I was wrong when I predicted we likely would not go through to the next round of the Cup.  This is one of the many times in my life that I am happy when I am wrong.  A nice bit of play from the lads gave us our late goal.  Nsaliwa to Edinho to [...]

AEK put five past Panserraikos in Serres this evening, with two goals coming from Blanco, two from Djebbour, and one from Scocco. Panserraikos' goal came from a penalty. AEK, in what was arguably one of its best performances this season had no trouble with the team from Serres. Considering Pnaserraikos had just come back from beating [.

Here is a video of some of the highlights from yesterday's match for those who didn't manage to watch it.

The match against Larissa ended 0-0 yesterday.

A report can be found here.

As the article states the draw means little for us. Either way, we can still qualify for Champions League as long as we beat Panathinaikos this Sunday. However, we did not play as well as we should have one week before the biggest game of the playoffs.

The story will likely be focused on the Center Referee and Freddie Ljungberg's double yellow. The first was for Simulation, what we all know as diving and the second is not listed in the match report. While it was likely Dissent, the 2nd Yellow was so quick one could question. What I [...]

Well, a press conference was held a few days back with regards to the new investors who were mentioned the post before. The deal has been confirmed, as most people expected, but still the names have not been revealed. Even at AEK only a few people (Notias, maybe Thanopoulos) know who they are.

We got the loss here I was fearing. Perhaps not a pleasing result but immediately we notice the away goal we scored. This will help us alot since really all we need in OAKA now is 1-0.

Before anything else two points must be pointed out. Firstly, Scocco was out for this match due to cards and will play with us for the next match.

A long press conference was held a few days ago by team president Thanopoulos. The president spoke for a couple of hours on a number of issues. Some of the highlights were:

-Firstly, he confirmed that things around the team are now calm. We have achieved our goals in terms of transfers and reaching the Europa League Group Stages

-The team is now on much more solid ground, financially.

We got a good win tonight at OAKA against a team that could have put up some difficulties. Unfortunately though, its quite late here, so I dont have time to post a review right now. Either I'll write it tomorrow or perhaps if either AEKMAN74 or AEKBaltimore watched the match they'll get something.

Well, our match in Giannena starts in a little under an hour. Our most likely starting lineup is said to be Saja, Araujo, Majstorovic, Arce, Juanfran, Jahic, Guerreiro, Hersi, Manduca, Nemeth, and Blanco. We will be going 4-4-2 with Blanco and Nemeth up front. A good line-up in my opinion, very strong, with some experienced players.

Well, there has been quite a bit of discussion in the post AEKBaltimore put up. Since the match alot has happened, most regarding the horrendous officiating at the match. But first, a review.

For everyone who has been following AEK you know how incredibly unlucky we tend to be, especially when it matters most.

So, another derby lost. That makes it the first time we've lost two derbies in a row in about ten years. Not a good sign.

Not many positives to take from this game, both sides played some pretty poor football. I'm not going to bother writing much as there is little to say. Firstly, our forwards still can't score.

A resurgent AEK overcame a depressing 4-0 thrashing to Everton two weeks ago to grind out a surprising but deserved 1-0 victory over Portugeuese powerhouse club Benfica FC.

The night started dismally for AEK. Playing what I believe was a 4-2-3-1 with Saja in goal and Juanfran, Arce, Marjstorovic, and Gorgeas in the back, Kafes and Jahic in defensive midfield roles, Manduca, Scocco and Hersi forming a three-man attacking line and Blanco playing lone goal-poacher up top, AEK struggled for possession early on.

Ok, to be honest, I was expecting a loss for AEK here. Aris were considered favorites for this game and I think that's somewhat justified. Bearing that in mind, I'll take a draw here. Its never easy to win away against Aris, even on a good day.

I wasn't able to watch the match since it was satellite.

So, one point from a game where it won't really do much to help us. In reality though, we could have come away with all three points had we managed to score one more of our chances, or had Saja not made a terrible mistake that the goalkeeper on my own amateur team would likely avoid.

Well, AEKBaltimore will watch the match on TV soon, since I believe he recorded it, and I'm not sure if AEKMAN74 watched as well.

So, a nice, relatively comfortable win on Monday brought us up from ninth to joint fifth.

We got the three points we so desperately needed, as well as a little bit of reassurance for the players and fans. Beating a team like Larissa with a score of 3-1 is always a nice thing. Sure, Larissa might not be at their best, but they are rarely an easy team to win against (I feel like I've said that many times already this season).

The first Athens derby of the new year ended in a 0-0 draw which gave Olympiakos the chance to move even further ahead in the standings after their 1-0 win against Asteras Tripolis. AEK started strong and managed to keep hold of the ball for long periods of time, especially during the first period. The most [.

AEK JUST BARELY managed to hold on and salvage a point after playing against a Larissa side which looked to be in good form. For the first twenty minutes the game was mostly controlled by Larissa, who attacked frequently but rarely manged to make anything of it. Around the 25th minute however, AEK started turning things [.

AEK grabbed another thre points this weekend to move into one point within second place in the standings. Goals for AEK came from Djebbour, Blanco (who is now top-scorer), and substitue Edinho. Levadeiakos' only goal came from an own goal after a Levadeiakos shot rebounded off Tacthtidis' foot, catching Saja off guard.

Its 5:30am Chicago time and very soon I will be boarding 1 of 3 busses bound for Columbus, Ohio for my first and the Fire's fourth away game of the new MLS season. This will be the first time the Fire and I have been back to Columbus since last season's Eastern Conference Final, which brings about terrible memories for Fire fans and players alike.