- How PSR is continuing to affect clubs in the Premier League
- How Arsenal are changing: new team, new directors, new belief
By Tony Attwood
Greece is a country whose football is dominated by three clubs: Olympiakos, AEK Athens, and PAOK Today Olympiakos inevitably stands top of the league in Greece, of course, having played five, won four, drawn one. They have scored 13 and conceded three.
Last season they were not in the Champions League but in the Europa League, and this absence allowed them to focus more on domestic form. As a result, they won the Greek Super League, winning 23 out of 32 games, and finishing seven points above their nearest rivals in second place. And they also managed to get the double by also winning the Greek Football Cup. That season they also played in the Europa League, where they went out in thye round of 16.
The top four in Greece have an eternal look, in keeping with the country’s mythology,
| Team | P | W | D | L | F | A | D | Pts | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Olymikpacos | 26 | 18 | 6 | 2 | 45 | 16 | +29 | 60 |
| 2 | AEK Athens | 26 | 16 | 5 | 5 | 44 | 16 | +28 | 53 |
| 3 | Panathinaikos | 26 | 14 | 8 | 4 | 31 | 22 | +9 | 50 |
| 4 | PAOK | 26 | 14 | 4 | 8 | 51 | 26 | +25 | 46 |
Olympiacos secured the 48th title in their history on 13 April 2025, after defeating AEK Athens by 1–0, at home in the third matchday of the Championship play-offs, winning their first title since the 2021–22 season.
In the Europa League, Olympiacos finished seventh…
| TeAm | P | W | D | L | F | A | GD | Pts | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 5 | Eintracht Frankfurt | 8 | 5 | 1 | 2 | 14 | 10 | +4 | 16 |
| 6 | Lyon | 8 | 4 | 3 | 1 | 16 | 8 | +8 | 15 |
| 7 | Olympiacos | 8 | 4 | 3 | 1 | 9 | 3 | +6 | 15 |
| 8 | Rangers | 8 | 4 | 2 | 2 | 16 | 10 | +6 | 14 |
| 9 | Bodø/Glimt | 8 | 4 | 2 | 2 | 14 | 11 | +3 | 14 |
They got to the knockout phase play-off off where they were defeated over two legs by Bodo Glimt.
This being a Uefa affair the fixtures are odd and unbalanced in the league stage of the Champions League. After this first home game we then have another home game on 21 October against the team their website calls Athete, but I think they mean Athletic Club. That’s on 21 October. Thereafter we find…
- 4 November Slavia Praha, away
- 23 November: Bayern Munich home
- 10 December Club Brugge away
- 20 January 2022 Inter Milan away
- 28 January 2022 FC Kairat home
If you want to know a bit more about FC Kairat Almaty, they are playing Real Madrid tonight, and you might be able to find it on a TV channel somewhere. Kairat won the Kazakhstan Premier League in 2024 (their season running from March to late October/early November) and they therefore claimed the country’s only place for the 2025-26 Champions League. Rumour has it that Real Mad will put out their reserve side.
Last season the Champions League group stage was quite a jolly affair
| Date | Match | Result | Score |
|---|---|---|---|
| 19 Sep 2024 | Atalanta v Arsenal | D | 0-0 |
| 01 Oct 2024 | Arsenal v Paris St Germain | W | 2-0 |
| 22 Oct 2024 | Arsenal v Shakhtar Donetsk | W | 1-0 |
| 06 Nov 2024 | Internazionale v Arsenal | L | 1-0 |
| 26 Nov 2024 | Sporting Clube Portugal v Arsenal | W | 1-5 |
| 11 Dec 2024 | Arsenal v AS Monaco | W | 3-0 |
| 22 Jan 2025 | Arsenal v Dinamo Zagreb | W | 3-0 |
| 29 Jan 2025 | Girona v Arsenal | W | 1-2 |
Arsenal, as you may recall, won six of the eight, drawing one and losing one. Arsenal came third behind Liverpool and Barcelona, winning six, drawing one and losing one, conceding just three goals in the entire eight-match group stage. We also had a rather jolly affair after that beating PSV 1-7. What made that particularly interesting was that PSV appeared to have won their League that season,
Even so, PSV still managed to go through to the knockout stage play-offs, accumulating just one point fewer than Real Madrid.
So hopefully we might have some more jolly times ahead in this year’s campaign in Europe. We don’t have data on referees, so we can’t go into the way they will influence matches as PGMO personnel do, but we can still have a few laughs along the way, I am sure.
Having won just two European trophies, I wasn’t particularly moved to go into that statistic, but then on looking further, I found something on Wikipedia which I thought I might pass on as it made me smile.
“In European football, they have won one European Cup Winners’ Cup and one Inter-Cities Fairs Cup. In terms of trophies won, it is the third-most successful club in English football.”
Well I never. Two trophies and the third most successful. Who’d have believed it?
