Trabzon

It's, it's never dull, Turkish, Turkish football, James.

No, I, this is a trend in Turkish football, uh, because the same thing happened in Trabzon, no? Shortly after Mo Salah joins Trabzonspor-

Yes, of course.

Yeah

... uh, their, their coach Fatih Terim, he was like, "I'm quitting.

I'm out." And they...

And Trabzon were like, "No, no, no, no. You're not going anywhere."

[laughs]

But, like, and then Vlahović went in on massive wages, obviously, at Beşiktaş to be their long-coveted number nine.

And Trabzon, who are the other side of this conversation now, um, have got Richarlison and Mohamed Salah.

So, you'd imagine there's not really a space for a Flo Balogun there either.

So I think he might have to just basically ice himself for three months and be like, "Tell you what, we'll come back to this deal in January," where someone will probably get a very, very good cut-price deal on Flo Balogun.

The ancient capital of the Abbasid Caliphate, uh, was the in-- uh, was also the intended terminus of the Berlin to Baghdad railway and a launching pad for Ottoman post-war ambitions in the Persian Gulf.

With the loss of Baghdad, coupled with their losses to the Russian, uh, to the Russians in Eastern Anatolia, which is, I mean, actually Anatolia is a way bigger catastrophe, uh, including the garrison town of Erzurum and the Black Sea port of Trabzon.

The fall of Mecca and Jeddah to the Hashemites and in Hejaz and the recent setbacks in the Sinai, the Ottomans once again were being pressed back on all frontiers.

And this is the, the, the recurring strategic crisis for all the Ottomans being squeezed circularly, uh, from the north, from the south, uh, and from, from the east, um, and the failure to break out in Sinai.

And I wonder if that's contributing to the issue, really.

Because what we're seeing is the departure now of Fatih Teka, the coach of Trabzon.

And he initially offered up his resignation after they were hammered in the end by Ferencvaros in the Europa League qualifiers.

Now,

They got a player sent off early on and it all went south.

And the club said no, because we've got to put it into context.

Fatih Teka has done a great job since he took over as coach of Trabzonspor.

And he's

I did, yeah.

I went to Trabzon for, uh, his first home game, first start for Trabzonspor, and, uh, rounded a corner on the stadium, and there was a, the, a chap there with a camel to-

Nice

... welcome, uh, Salah in the most appropriate, not culturally insensitive way.

And to you, Nick Miller.

Have you got any crazy on the road adventures lined up?

Uh, nothing particularly lined up at the moment, but my, my dispatch from, uh, from Trabzon on the camel-

Oh, yeah

So we didn't have like Donme tradition in Cyprus as it was documented very well in the Ottoman history.

Like in Thessalonica, you had Jewish people who became so-called Muslims, but they were also practicing the Judaism secretly and in Turkey there are crypto Christians like in Trabzon and everything in Cyprus it was I think even though there were some, like, according to British researchers, like in the first census, they mentioned of two villages just converted back to Christianity and they were called the Linovambag villages and things like that.

Linovambag, as you know, it means linen and cotton.

Yeah.

And now he's not playing for us, he does finally get an assist.

He had several assists for the other teams, Fenerbahce, Trabzon, I'm sure there were others.

I think there were three or four of those similar situations.

By the way, I'm just quickly going to respond.

What did they...

I mean, yes, they got in the Champions League, but I think that bullshit penalty didn't decide that.

I don't think Trabzon were close enough anyway.

So, it didn't really change anything for them.