Okay - this bloke deserves an individual thread, too!

He'll return to Ajax for the new season.

K.

He'll be our MOTS in the next few years, mark my words.

Amsterdam news network AT5 reports that Thomas Vermaelen is very unlikely to play against Utrecht on Sunday. The defender picked up an injury recently, had an MRI scan made at the hospital and it seemed like it was nothing serious. But the injury didn't go away, he had another MRI scan made at the hospital and it now seems like he will need a bit more time.

Hmmm. No Trabelsi, no Grygera, no Vermaelen. And no Escudé. Seems like we can prepare mentally for a Heitinga/Maduro defense, with God knows who (De Jong?) as a right fullback. Which is seriously bad news. It's going to be as leaky as f**k.

K.

Schilder might have to play or Boayke as he plays right back for the Jong Team. If De jong goes this week I think we are down to about 15 first teamers,5 strikers!! It does not look good for our defence this weekend.

Serves us right for selling Julien.

Gis a break, Bryan. Escudé was a liability if ever I've seen one. True, so is e.g. Heitinga. But getting rid of one liability at the time's good policy from my point of view. Let's hope Johnny-boy'll be next. Van Gaal's full of praise, he can have him as far as I'm concerned...

Vermaelen's a much better left-footed than Escudé ever was or will be, if you ask me. So I think we did the right thing by dumping Escudé and extending Vermaelen's contract.

Nevertheless, we'll have a problem this Sunday with a number of defenders out. I'd play Heitinga in central defence (for lack of a better option) and Lindenbergh alongside him. I think Olaf's an underrated player at Ajax, useful both in defence and midfield. I also think Maduro's better in midfield than he is in defence... Leaves the rightback position. Blind could pick de Jong, but he seems to have many a thing on his mind and none of them have anything to do with our club, so I'd say he'd better pick Boakye from the 2nd team.

we can play with a jong player in right and Olaf and Johnny in defense ,we´re no Sneijder...so we need Maduro in Midfield....

Ok now im starting to get worried now that De Jong has been sold how is our defence going to shape up ?????? What about Midfield ????? Oh my fucking god are we going to have a kinder garden on Sunday ???? :sad:

i think Yilidrim will debut...

Timsela is a right back...he´s usually in the Ajax A1...let´s wait and See..WE Need a WIN

I'm starting to have my doubts about Vermaelen. He had quite a good start in the first team, but in recent weeks...? Am I exaggerating or were all three Feyenoord goals the direct result of a mistake or poor defending by Vermaelen? I seriously think this was the case...

K.

Better late than never, Ko. He is just terrible. We will not start the stupid SQD nostalgia again but ….
In every game I have seen, he has made several blunders. Did not see anything from yesterday's game, but I think the guy is our weakest link.

Give the guy a break..I think he is not 100% fit and splitting up the central defence also does not help. ( Maduro instead of Grygera next to him) I think he can do a lot better.

The whole defense was poor, and most of the attacks I've seen came from the left, when Urby was still upfront... Feyenoord were way faster than our defense.
Vermaelen was quite unlucky for the first goal, I don't remember the second and for the third, I don't think he could have done something...

state of shock I presume ? :au:

seriously, where could you watch the game ? I'm curious because I could not

Yeah. Not sure about him yet either. Have only seen him play a few times, but don't really rate him that highly, but then again I don't really rate the whole defense very highly either (except for Urby of course).

Cant remember too much about the first goal as some nugget in the bar had poured beer all over my jacket just beforehand, so missed that. The 2nd goal was poor in my opinion from two points of view - 1stly we had the ball in the Feyenoord half going into injury time and instead elected to play a long ball from just inside our half, back to the keeper, which I thought was daft as there was no real pressure on to put the ball back so far.

2ndly, Vermaelen then receives the ball, goes charging up the pitch and tries to play a defenece splitting pass which failed. Instead, he is caught out of position the ball knocked beyond him and Feyenoord score. Think Vermaelen has to put his hands up there.

Third goal the defence was asleep, all of them.

Somebody also made the point about Urby going upfield and being caught out. I am a big fan of Urby, think his tackling is usually spot on but he does get caught out often after his forays upfield. Would like to see him play in the left side of midfield with Juanfran at left back. Think this way either player can move forward when required but cover for each other. When Urby goes forward the whole left side is exposed too much as we do not have a naturally left side midfielder.

The second one in particular was a very bad mistake by Vermaelen. Two of our defenders had gone forward (Urby and Maduro), which is okay (they have to, every once in a while), but Vermaelen should never have given such a risky pass through the middle at that moment, seconds before half-time. That's lesson #1 in the defender's manual. Come on.

His attempt to intercept when Hofs showed up in front of Stekelenburg for the first goal was not exactly convincing either.

And the third goal... Oh well, Kuyt was in Vermaelen's "zone" of the defense, but it was just a fantastic strike, so I won't blame Vermaelen for that one, on second thought. But the first two goals...? He didn't really shine there, did he.

K.

This is a very interesting idea indeed, thus we could play both Urby and Juanfran, and use them at their best. :xyxthumbs:

Didn't see the game (I was away at my eldest son's wedding), and I don't want to see it either. However, I feel that I have to reply to the criticism on behalf of the Urby party. This guy is the one Ajax player who appears to have all the attributes of a real Ajax player. He appears to have the most idea of the lot of them on how to turn defence into attack in the matter of a couple of strides (Chivu also had this ability) - what should happen is that as he moves forward somebody covers his back. Now I know he wasn't the flavour of the month (and I am not saying he should return either), but Sikora understood this principle - the full back goes forward and he used to drop back slightly to cover - at the moment we don't appear to have anyone with the savy to do this. Also what the f*ck are the coaches doing during training sessions - this sort of thing is bog standard and not rocket science.
We are Ajax - we play (or should do) attacking football which can carry an element of risk - do we really want to change this?

BTW (off topic) from a glimpse of the Lazio/Ac game last night it appeared that Stam was playing right-back.

AHAHAHAHAHAAA, Sikora ;)

You NEVER give up, do you?

OPH, not going to disagree with any of your comments about Urby. IMO he has been the player of the season by a mile so far but because of the lack of a naturally left sided player in front of him to offer cover when he does go forward that whole side of the pitch is exposed. This is not the fault of Urby but the management for failing to spot this. With this lack of cover on the left side that is why I am suggesting putting him into the left side of midfield with Juanfran behind him. It means Urby can go forward more often without the whole side of the pitch being exposed. it also means we have two naturally left footed players on the pitch.

I am very glad to see Urby back in the team and cannot see an issue with using him to tighten up the left side of the pitch by playing as a midfielder as he is certainly not going to do any worse than the other midfielders we have playing.

You have my vote - what you are saying makes perfect sense to me.

It would then be interesting to see where they would play Rosenberg.

Back onto Vermaelen - the guy at the moment is an ok (but no better) prospect but looks as though a puff of wind would blow him over. I think that this guy will really improve upon the arrival of Stam.

I didn't watch the whole game, I just watched the summary available on ultrasuid.

The kid is just inexperienced he does have some good assets but he also has his flaw`s. The second goal was the perfect example of a rookie mistake being tied at 1-1 a piece he should have never done such a risky move, he was cought flat footed and bang!!!! That was game over as far as i could tell, sicologicaly(or something like that :D ) speaking the team was down and out.

I hope he gets better but he still needs to grow both phisically and mentally.One things for sure he should be on the bench and not in the starting line up. But that is manegments fault :furious3: