02 Nov 2013: Ajax - Vitesse

[Van basten]

The stronger team won today. This is our level right there.

[afcajax73]

what a joke!

[afcajax73]

how poor are we?

[saddlerian]

Same old problem...they all seem scared to shoot; they want to give the responsibility to someone else....NOT GOOD ENOUGH!!!

That's all I'm going to say...not worth worrying about....I'm off to watch Strictly!!!

[paladinby]

We are scoring no goals in 2 consecutive league games and de Boer is still fielding the same attacking line-up.

De Jong in his minutes as a striker laid more good passes that Sigthorsson in the season. However as a midfielder de Jong was bad tonight.

[SPL]

Utter rubbish again. Boilesen makes the mistake but Denswil backs away and lets the guy shoot . We are getting worse and have more away than home games coming up.

[King Litti]

The game came to life in the second. Could have gone either way, but Vitesse maybe had the better of the chances. We came close in the end, but it wasn't our night and it looks like it isn't our year though plenty of football still to play. Veltman my m.o.m. Cilessen and Blind were also good.

[SPL]

Veltman indeed had a good game but yet again the goal came from Denswil's weakness.Ok I'm being hard on him but he just backed away and let the guy shoot .Poor defending by him and not for the first time in recent weeks the other sides goals come from his errors.

[Tom_]

Result was pretty fair based on the number of chances Vitesse made in the second half.

After the discussion about tactics in the other thread we come up against a team who are theoretically playing into our hands, i.e. pressing rather than sitting back—and we still can't get the ball past their midfield to make chances. I'm no tactics expert but I reckon the team with better players will have a better chance of winning no matter how you line them up on the field, and our real problem is that either our squad is not good enough or too many players are performing below their level.

[GangstaRiB]

The game came to life in the second. Could have gone either way, but Vitesse maybe had the better of the chances. We came close in the end, but it wasn't our night and it looks like it isn't our year though plenty of football still to play. Veltman my m.o.m. Cilessen and Blind were also good.

Ajax 'created' chances with kick 'n rush football, which De Boer despises. At this moment there is not a player that stands out. I believe that its slipping away from De Boer. The squad is simply not good enough.

[Orange14]

Well it did end up 1-0 thanks to Boilesen's poor play at the end. Maybe Denswil could have done better but he shouldn't have been put in that position. Had a couple of good chances in the final 10 minutes but everyone other than Fischer looks afraid to shoot. I really don't understand why Fischer was withdrawn for Schöne when it was de Jong who deserved to come off. I can't see this team doing much at all this season given the well known problems. Decent play from Veltman who was probably the best field player out there.

Player Ratings:

Cillessen (7.5) - had a couple of good saves and came out well to cut down the angles when a player broke in on him, didn't look like he had a chance on the goal
Blind (6.5) - decent enough match and he seemed to move the ball forward pretty well when Poulsen left the game
Denswil (6) - played a Vitesse man on side and got lucky that there was no goal from it
Veltman (7) - solid match and made some really nice plays on defense
van Rhijn (5.5) - lost his man a couple of times and was marginally above average otherwise
Poulsen (7) - strong game until he tired
Serero (3.5) - better than last week
de Jong (3) - absolutely terrible; why didn't he shoot when Fischer got him the ball right at the spot?
Andersen (4.5) - more and more looking like a lightweight, easily dispossessed numerous times
Sigrhorrson (4) - has no ball control at all on entry passes and too slow otherwise
Fischer (6) - only player who knows how to attack
Klaasen (5.5) - would rather see him on the pitch than de Jong, he's quicker
Boilsesen (3.5) - very poor match and his poor play let to the goal
Schöne (5.5) - on briefly but a nice free kick that went off the post; time to start in the midfield

As I said, this team is going to have to win a lot of 1-0 matches; they didn't today. Cannot see things improving anytime soon.

[SPL]

Agree with Orange's ratings,biggest mystery why was Fischer taken off! Someone asked are players out of form or not good enough. VRhijn is out of form ,Denswil is making mistakes through inexperience but they are costing goals. Serero and de Jong are just poor and Siggy not much better.I would sell all 3 in January they are not good enough. Andersen should not be in the team he is too lightweight and not ready . Poulsen plays well for 70 mins before getting tired and cannot manage 2 games a week.

The big problem is with Duarte Moisander and Bojan injured we have just 18 players and some I have not mentioned are not good enough. Vermeer,Sana,Klaassen and Hoesen are not good enough and as for V D Hoorn we should ask Utrecht for our money back,Veltman is looking good at that CD position.The best players in Jong Ajax are 17 and 18 and not ready.

I think playing in the CL is doing us no favours as these kids are not up to playing a tough CL then a league game 3 or 4 days later.Today we were unlucky abit as we could so easily have won .

The policy is not to buy but a playmaker is needed, another winger and a striker. We cannot wait for the best youths to come through, Walian is the best striker and just 16 ,Nouri also 16 is the best attacking MF prospect but very frail and given we haven't bothered to contract either we could easily lose to them English clubs.

[King Litti]

i agree that it seems that we would have to do some serieous x'mas shopping to turn things around this season, but i dont think we will cause it isnt our style and who could we buy anyway? We could maybe come up with the money for a transfer but nobody from the big leagues would ever agree personal terms cause they are used to bigger wages. I really hope we haven't seen everything from bojan yet. I mean he must be better than we have seen. He must be eager to show his worth for his careers sake cause if you can't make it in the eredivisie you can forget about the big leagues.

[saddlerian]

I think that you'll find that some cash will be spent in January....after being kicked out of the CL by Celtic this week.....the money's come too late...the season seems over with no, and it's not December yet!!!

There just seems a lack of "need to score" among any of the players....where is the "shoot on sight" attitude that was part of the last few seasons? Why do they need to "pussy foot" in the penalty area like Barcelona clones? If they want to play like that, I suggest that a new man is put in charge.....and I'm going to suggest that this new man, a product of the youth in his club, be Dean Smith, the Walsall manager.....the style of play that he has instilled in his teams over the past few years is the traditional passing game, quick and precise....and very entertaining!!! For once, I think FDB has gone as far as he can with these "boys".....GET DEANNO IN!!!!!

[Orange14]

i agree that it seems that we would have to do some serieous x'mas shopping to turn things around this season, but i dont think we will cause it isnt our style and who could we buy anyway?

Exactly the question that needs to be answered and that answer is not much. Maher desperately wanted to come to Ajax last summer and we were after van Ginkel who ends up at Chelsea probably because Vitesse get lots of Chelsea loanees in return (I think the match announcer said that there were five Chelsea loan players on the pitch at the end of the match!). Maher has not done especially well at PSV so far this season so maybe it would have been money ill spent to bring him in. The only player in the league that I would want at this point is Clasie at Feyenoord and that's not going to happen. I haven't seen any other midfielders so far this season that are worth spending money on. I'm not sure that any of our under performing players are worth much at this point in time. Who is going to buy them? Certainly not another league side and the teams that can pay good money are not going to want any of them. We are caught between a rock and a hard place right now. Unless we can do a double swoop for Neymar and Messi things aren't going to get much better.