Beşiktaş earned two valuable lessons in the past week. The team is clueless when their wings are blocked and they are only effective when the game is centered on Oğuzhan Özyakup and Anderson Talisca. They learned the first lesson in a loss against Fenerbahçe and they beat Leipzig in the Champions League by understanding the second. Nevertheless, they lost three of their most crucial players in the team's strategy against Fenerbahçe, Ricardo Quaresma, Atiba Hutchinson and Oğuzhan Özyakup. Now, they don't have the option of Quaresma's crosses which was the team's main plan and they have also lost the center of their game. Seeing as he has been deprived of his individual talents, coach Güneş has to utilize the collective action of his team in creating attacks. Otherwise, Trabzonspor is skilled enough to punish cheap tactics done by the secondary players of Beşiktaş. First of all, despite the fact that they have undergone some tough times, Trabzonspor have great counter-attacking talents like Yusuf Yazıcı, Juraj Kucka, Olcay Şahan, Jose Sosa and Burak Yılmaz. But more importantly they have a coach who is specialized in blocking the talented teams and hitting them with clever transition games, namely Ersun Yanal. Now, given the fact that Fenerbahçe coach Aykut Kocaman showed everyone how to stop Beşiktaş, I find it hard to believe that Yanal did not get the message. He will also concentrate on how to stop Beşiktaş bringing the ball to the wings and interrupting the connection between the center of the game and the wingers. Yanal's main strategy has always been pressing the opponent while they are building the game and then turning them into counter-attacks. Thus, Beşiktaş needs to be extra-cautious and talented in building the game with the absence of Hutchinson and Özyakup.

However, Trabzonspor's main problems are not so different from Beşiktaş's and they are also having trouble with building up their game under heavy press and they are giving away too many opportunities to their opponents. Coach Güneş would probably use Tolgay Arslan and Gary Medel in front of his defense, players who can create a tough center for Beşiktaş, and press Juraj Kucka and Jose Sosa to cripple Trabzon's transition game. Without Quaresma, it is almost impossible to implement the same crossing tactics and his replacement Jeremain Lens is a natural counter attacker with great speed. I expect Beşiktaş to play less dominant and more reactive given they will have a less talented squad. Then, it will all be up to how Trabzon will respond to this attitude and how creative it can be in terms of opening up a willingly defensive opponent. Surely it will be a difficult game for both sides and it will push them to put a different layer to their usual strategy.