Aragonés looks to ease Fenerbahçe panic

Fenerbahçe SK coach Luis Aragonés reminded the club's fans that the Turkish title race "was like a marathon" rather than a sprint with unrest following his side's third successive league game without a win.

Ten-man opponents
A 2-0 loss against modest local rivals İstanbul BB SK on Sunday followed draws against Trabzonspor and Gaziantepspor in Fenerbahçe's first two Süper Lig games of 2009. The defeat was made all the more galling by the fact that their opponents played most of the game with ten men, following Mahmut Tekdemir's dismissal one minute before the interval.

Threadbare squad
Now fifth, seven points adrift of league leaders Sivasspor, the 17-time champions have not been firing on all cylinders, with goalkeeper Volkan Demirel having saved them from further indignity. On Sunday they were without the suspended Selçuk Şahin and Edu, while Josico and Abdülkadir Kayalı were missing through injury, but fans still expect better.

'That's football'
"The problem is football itself," sighed Aragonés. "İstanbul BB had two attacks and scored twice, while we had four or five but scored none. That's football. We should look into it like this. Throughout the game there was a concentration problem which also led to us conceding the first goal. Our opponents played better than us in most areas of this game."

Controversial decision
Aragonés nettled fans by replacing playmaker Alex with Kazım Kazım on 58 minutes, a move perceived to have reduced Fenerbahçe's attacking options despite being up against ten men, but the Spanish coach was unrepentant, and added: "In the first half of the season there were times when we were eleven points behind the leaders. Margins widen and narrow. The league is a marathon."