Please no more Advocaat -- never could stand him -- always glad to see the back of him -- like a recurring horror movie nightmare he keeps coming back from the dead.

Best half of football that I've seen so far this year. Vermeer (I've always liked him - fantastic shot stopper) made three 'sure goal' saves to keep the score from being even higher.

That's the way to start a match! (AZ whupped PSV, btw).

PSV vs AZ match -- 22nd min -- AZ having the better of the play so far -- PSV's Thomas is red carded -- let's hope AZ will go on from here to win the match.

Outpassed, outshot, outtackled, out hustled. Lucky not to be down by 3 at the half. Has to rank as one of the worst halves of football I've seen in a long time.

Totally against the run of play Ajax counterattacks - Ziyech redeems himself for his first half misses by providing Neres with a through pass, and TH's substitution pays off as Neres puts it home for what must surely be the end of ADO's hopes.

About 12 mins left and we're still basically hanging on. Neres in for Promes - probably a good move as Promes has been increasingly less effective as the game has gone on.

Getting badly outplayed in the first 15 mins of the 2nd half. Getting out hustled to the ball, frantic defending and clearing and can't put two passes together.

Half time -- up 0-1. So many chances wasted. A match that should have been out of sight is still poised on a bubble that could easily burst. Some really nice attacking, but just not enough determination to get the ball into the net. Beautiful give and go Dest-Donny-Dest, but Dest pulls his shot just...

Nice run by Ziyech to work free of two defenders and lay the ball off for Hunts who puts the ball into the lower left corner past the goalkeeper's outstretched leg.

Finally a kickoff at an hour that is reasonable for me. Looking forward to enjoying a nice win.

Our U19s won their match 3-5. Here's hoping that it will inspire the big boys to win theirs. This is yet another 'wee hours of the morning' match for me, so I'll have to rely on the comments and highlights tomorrow. Here's looking forward to a good outcome.

Yet another match that starts in the middle of the night in my time zone. Time was when I could stay up all night and think nothing of it, but since I've entered geezerhood, I can't get away with it anymore - I think I've only watched three games so far, and this is another one that I'm going to hav...

1-1 draw -- the difference is they were happy with the result while we were disappointed. The defense was really good overall - the offense was good when they actually attacked instead of wasting chances with stopping and back passing. Have to say it wasn't one of Ziyech's better days. Well - still ...

It's all hands to the pumps from now til the end of the game.

Nicely taken - and he has to feel better for making up for the one he missed.

Finally got one to go in. Their forwards are too fast for Schuurs and Veltman. Wouldn't mind seeing Dest come in - his speed is what's needed to negate their forwards.

After squandering chance after chance, you just knew that they were going to get snake bit. They're playing nice attacking football, but it all counts for naught if you don't end up putting the ball in the net.

@souras84 Veltman came up as a CB and played quite well in that position - he got moved to RB as an emergency replacement and got stuck there afterward - which is why he never was that good in that position. IMO, he's been decent enough at CB so far.

For me, there was too much futzing around with the ball in the final third. All that passing back and forth to the guy standing 1 meter away from you - and him being covered and even double covered - wasted opportunities to set up someone to get a step on the defender and take a shot. Same criticism...

It's not beyond the realm of possibility that we win this group.

Valencia and Lille are the other teams in group H.

Failure to get an away goal in the first game (I was actually hoping we could get two) puts us in an extremely dangerous position for this game. If we concede an away goal and they go into a shell that we can't crack, I'm afraid it could be all over for us. Onana is going to have to come up with a h...

A clean sheet and two away goals is what I'm hoping for in this leg - that should set us up very nicely for the return match.

I think losing Donny would be worse for us than losing de Jong. de Jong is more stylish but Donny contributed more IMO... My sentiments exactly. If you look back at one of my previous posts, I wrote that Barcelona might have regrets about which midfielder they took. (Although, looking at highlights...