18 May 2008: Ajax - FC Twente

bluedaddy19 · Bericht door **bluedaddy19** » zo mei 18, 2008 3:42 pm

SydAjax schreef:Fucking pathetic.

seconded

grachtdog · Bericht door **grachtdog** » zo mei 18, 2008 3:44 pm

GangstaRiB schreef:Nah...
Twente didn't have to score.

The key to a winning Ajax defense

Venezuelan Ajacied · Bericht door **Venezuelan Ajacied** » zo mei 18, 2008 3:47 pm

I really hope we can turn the page with MVB and make a new start....we really need to rebuild this team.

At least we wont get out hearts broken in the preliminary round like always....thoug its going to be a bit sad see us play teams from Cyprus, Armenia and the sort.....

GangstaRiB · Bericht door **GangstaRiB** » zo mei 18, 2008 3:52 pm

grachtdog schreef:
GangstaRiB schreef:Nah...
Twente didn't have to score.
The key to a winning Ajax defense

Yeah.. as soon as the opponent plays 50% of their full strenght, Ajax will hold on. Every team that gives 100% scores againt Ajax. As simple as that.

Van der Vaart · Bericht door **Van der Vaart** » zo mei 18, 2008 4:59 pm

That guy,Douglas ,is fucking great.
He didn´t lose any play in the air or in the ground.

Anyway,Worst Season EVER

SPL · Bericht door **SPL** » zo mei 18, 2008 6:46 pm

Had a horrible feeling about this game so went out and enjoyed the sun shine( well I would have but car radiator has a leak and it will cost 300euros for anew one)

Highlights are on Channel 5 this week so I will watch them. Did Slijngard impress you ??

Last game for Heits Davids and KJH. After a great season poor old KJH has had 4 playoff games without scoring.I wish him well and sure he will go but still have my doubts about him in the EPL or with Real Madrid.Gut feeling is he is another Kezman.This is not sour grapes and I hope he does well . I will follow him wherever as I like the guy .

Also goodbye to a legend Edgar Davids, what a difference this season would have been had he had shin pads on in Deventer !!!

Now we are in the UEFA Cup we can have a clearout. We cannot do worse than put some local kids in ie Sarpong De Jong and Slijngard all played .

DanK · Bericht door **DanK** » ma mei 19, 2008 8:15 am

Disappointing but being in the UEFA Cup isn't the end of the world. Given our last few years, we would end up there anyway. Until we strengthen the squad I don't think we are good enough to play in Europe's top tier.

Also noticed ADO got promoted. Man what a crappy Sunday

K.J. Huntelaar · Bericht door **K.J. Huntelaar** » ma mei 19, 2008 10:07 am

F.ck it! Next year it will all be all about the title! F.ck UEFa cup and shite clubs. WE WANT THE TITLE!!!

DanK · Bericht door **DanK** » ma mei 19, 2008 11:14 am

K.J. Huntelaar schreef:...F.ck UEFa cup and shite clubs. WE WANT THE TITLE!!!

Shite clubs? AC Milan, not really shite

Monkey Tonk · Bericht door **Monkey Tonk** » ma mei 19, 2008 12:14 pm

I'm kind of relieved we're not playing CL next year. And I would actually favor giving up the second CL spot for Dutch soccer. That way only the champion plays CL, as it was in the old EC 1 setup. Why is that preferable? Because it allows a team a period to rebuild. You can't get to the high peaks without rebuilding in the valleys. As it is right now, Ajax is always caught in the middle, stuck against some mountain cliff somewhere and hanging on for dear life.

We need to start from scratch. Plain and simple. The team lacks a foundation and has lacked it for years. Without a strong bottom floor it is impossible to develop into a well organized and refined football machine. Without a foundation the building always collapses. For years Ajax has been unable to get beyond the first floor. Why? Because they're trying to build in mid air.

The Purple Cow · Bericht door **The Purple Cow** » ma mei 19, 2008 1:12 pm

I think you stretched your metaphor beyond breaking point there monkey, but I think I know what you mean.

**

I think the UEFA cup is just a huge mess at the moment and badly needs reorganizing. The current set up where you play some teams twice and then others only once, sometimes at home and some away, and then a bunch of losers from the C.L. are parachuted in half way through, is just a farce. You can see why the big clubs don't even bother playing their strongest teams any more.

bryan · Bericht door **bryan** » ma mei 19, 2008 1:21 pm

The only good thing now is that we know now exactly what kind of players we can bring in, and have a whole summer to do it.

If the club had been in the CL playoffs then most likely there'd be a bunch of players who'd want to come to the club, but would be waiting to see if we'd win the CL playoff first, and the club would be holding out too to see if the extra money was available or not. That would mean chasing after player in the couple of weeks between the CL playoff and the transfer deadline. At least the situation is clear and the work can start now. Unfortunately for Ajax, PSV in in the same clear position too, but are guaranteed CL football in the group stage, so will be shopping in a higher bracket than us.

I still think putting Adrie Koster in charge of the club for 7 months was one of the worst decisions in the history of the club.

Bericht door **Kowalczyk** » ma mei 19, 2008 2:36 pm

bryan schreef:I still think putting Adrie Koster in charge of the club for 7 months was one of the worst decisions in the history of the club.

Indeed it was.

That decision sums it all up, really. Absolutely shocking and it's not even about Adrie Koster as such. The head-coach (what you'd call the manager in the U.K.) is the most important man in the club. You need top drawer quality at that position. Ajax's head-coach (Henk ten Cate) decided to leave after only a few weeks. And what did Ajax do? They said: oh well, in that case we'll push the coach of the reserves team forward to do the job. And you know what, he'll finish the season - and we'll officially announce that.

That is amateurism of the worst kind. Such a decision is never okay for a professional sports company with an annual budget of 65 million euros. I mean: if your head-coach walks out of the door at the start of the season, you issue a statement saying: we have a man to do the job for the time being, and his name is Adrie Koster, but the club will do everything to find a new international top caliber manager a.s.a.p. With all due respect to Adrie Koster: we're talking about the most important position in the club - and we're not going to gamble. We want a top man and we won't settle for less.

That's how it should be. But Ajax just shrugged the shoulders and said: ummm, what now? Let's see, we have Adrie Koster... He's kind of alright, isn't he? Let's make him head-coach. For the rest of the season!

Unbelievable. And once again: I'm not even judging Adrie Koster here. I'm judging the top level management decision that Ajax took. In fucking October, for crying out loud.

K.

Cedric · Bericht door **Cedric** » ma mei 19, 2008 3:10 pm

Replace Ajax by PSV, and Koster by Wouters/Vergoossen (not really impressive either), and you have the champion.

I can understand why both Ajax and PSV decided to proceed like this: there aren't many "top man" that those club can dream of during the season...

The worst decision, to me, was probably the "Stam affair" : he didn't really want to continue but they forced him to do so and didn't even think of a replacement (while the defence was already crap last season...).

gordonvandekamp · Bericht door **gordonvandekamp** » ma mei 19, 2008 3:16 pm

I think the Koster situation is mostly mitigated by the fact that van Basten was already in line to take over next year, so whoever was going to be head coach this year, they knew they would be gone after the season, and also probably wouldn't have much control in terms of bringing in any players. I can only imagine the management wouldn't be entirely cooperative with the manager knowing he was only temporary.

I think that's why Ajax kept things in house. What's the use in trying to bring in a big name manager, for only part of a season, and pay him big money. I'm not sure how enticing that would be for a manager (although I think it would have been possible to bring in a quality manager who had previous ties to the club to suit this need). Basically after we were out of the CL, the sale of Sneijder/Babel/etc. and ten Cate leaving, the management seemed to write off the season as a rebuilding season.

Unfortunately because of what they did, next season's going to be the same, although the changes will be more drastic. I think we would have been in a much better position had we used this year to play some youngsters more and get them ready for next year, especially as first teamers left and were not replaced. I just wonder how many more seasons the management is going to write off as "rebuilding seasons"?

As for the game, I thought Slijngaard and Sarpong both played well. I think Davids was right again, and the team just wasn't motivated enough to come out and win. They knew they had to score, but they didn't act like it until the 80th minute.

I just don't get some of the purchases/team selections this season. Like, putting Urzaiz in this game, he's not going to do anything after sitting on the bench all season. It seemed like a waste of a sub in such an important game, and a waste of money and roster spot this season for signing Urzaiz/Kuffour/Luque/Delorge. I'm not sure our plan of lobbing crosses in against their taller defenders who were just sitting at home all game was going to lead to a goal either. The best chance we got as Lindgren's attempt near the end of the game on a short pass from Suarez at the top of the box. That seemed like the best way to break Twente down, but apparently wasn't in the plan. Would have been nice to have a defender like Douglas on our side this year.

Just also read that Twente is an option for Steve McLaren according to his agent.

aveslacker · Bericht door **aveslacker** » ma mei 19, 2008 4:44 pm

Van der Vaart schreef:Anyway,Worst Season EVER

I think the 2000 season and the 2006 season were both worse.

bryan · Bericht door **bryan** » ma mei 19, 2008 6:18 pm

I think Ajax should have gone looking for a new manager straight away as soon as Ten Cate left. If they wanted Van Basten then they should have offered him the job in November... take it or leave it. If he thought it was too much to combine the Ajax function with the Dutch team for the remainder of the season, then they should have thanked him and looked for another manager who wanted to take over immediately. The entire club shouldn't be planned around Van Basten.

The likes of Co Adriaanse and Roy Hodgson could have taken over at the beginning of 2008. Who knows, we may have become champions...

Van basten · Bericht door **Van basten** » ma mei 19, 2008 6:38 pm

aveslacker schreef:
Van der Vaart schreef:Anyway,Worst Season EVER
I think the 2000 season and the 2006 season were both worse.

I don't think that 2005/2006 season was worse than this one. We were terible almost all season then, but in the end we won KNVB Cup and the play-offs and this year we are left with big fu*king 0

DanK · Bericht door **DanK** » ma mei 19, 2008 7:43 pm

bryan schreef:I think Ajax should have gone looking for a new manager straight away as soon as Ten Cate left. If they wanted Van Basten then they should have offered him the job in November... take it or leave it. If he thought it was too much to combine the Ajax function with the Dutch team for the remainder of the season, then they should have thanked him and looked for another manager who wanted to take over immediately. The entire club shouldn't be planned around Van Basten.

The likes of Co Adriaanse and Roy Hodgson could have taken over at the beginning of 2008. Who knows, we may have become champions...

Fully agree. I don't mind that the club really wanted van Basten, but writing off the season to wait to get him, in hindsight was a stupid idea.

gordonvandekamp · Bericht door **gordonvandekamp** » ma mei 19, 2008 8:29 pm

DanK schreef: Fully agree. I don't mind that the club really wanted van Basten, but writing off the season to wait to get him, in hindsight was a stupid idea.

Yeah it was, but I think some of the fault has to lay with ten Cate taking off weeks into the season. The timing of the really screws over the club, both on and off the field, no matter what.

Even though it wasn't official, it seemed pretty definite (probably more so to Ajax management) that van Basten would be taking over once he was done with the national team and ten Cate would be out. I agree that management really should have had a better backup plan, but they really weren't in a very good position.

I think they wrote off this season long before then, and did that when players were sold after the season started with no replacements brought in. So it really didn't matter what they did in terms of coaching. Since the season was written off, the best (cheapest) option was to appoint Koster.

It's all speculation at this point whether someone like Adriaanse would have made more of a difference, but the reality is that we lost the title by 3 points. One more win and we would have been champions and probably not even talking about any of this. With it being so close, you can scrutinize almost anything, whether it be the coach, players, or management being to blame for the end result.

I think it just makes it harder knowing that not letting in just one goal, or putting one more in during those close games could have made a huge difference for this season and next season. So close, but nothing in the end.

aveslacker · Bericht door **aveslacker** » ma mei 19, 2008 9:24 pm

Last year was even worse in terms of what if. AZ away comes to mind.

In any event, I've been skeptical about Marco, but I'm starting to warm to him. It looks like he's learning some lessons about player selection during his time at the helm of the national team. Also, I greatly respect that he stuck his neck out to help his old club when he might have had an offer from some Spanish or Italian glamor side. Hopefully he'll have control over purchases. The early results are promising in that the club is at least looking at players outside of the eredivisie (i.e. Cvitanich).

I'm optimistic that, at very least, the days of ramshackle personnel management (remember the Zlatan sale?) are over.

DanK · Bericht door **DanK** » ma mei 19, 2008 9:49 pm

I hope that van Basten gets the time he needs to rebuild the club and the fans don't turn on him if we aren't on top 3 or 4 months in.

I as much as anyone want a championship next season, but in reality its not going to be easy. I will be happy with improvement and a proper direction of the club overall.

Lets give the club time to rebuild properly. No more false starts. No more bullshit. I just hope van Basten is the man to do it.

Frans · Bericht door **Frans** » di mei 20, 2008 4:54 am

gordonvandekamp schreef:
Yeah it was, but I think some of the fault has to lay with ten Cate taking off weeks into the season. The timing of the really screws over the club, both on and off the field, no matter what.

...

I don't think Ten Cate would have been so eager to jump ship if he'd been given a bit of support from the fans

DanK · Bericht door **DanK** » di mei 20, 2008 8:15 am

Frans schreef:
gordonvandekamp schreef:
Yeah it was, but I think some of the fault has to lay with ten Cate taking off weeks into the season. The timing of the really screws over the club, both on and off the field, no matter what.

...
I don't think Ten Cate would have been so eager to jump ship if he'd been given a bit of support from the fans

Ajax supporters not supporting coaches??? I'm shocked you can say such things

ZoefdeHaas · Bericht door **ZoefdeHaas** » di mei 20, 2008 10:57 am

It's definitely the "hot shots" that are to be blamed.

They're responsible for appointing someone with high calibre in coaching, and to purchase players that will help the team...

Well that didn't happen. We lost Senijder, Babel, and no decent replacements, with the exception of Suarez. Things got worse when Stam retired.

Echoing Ko's point on how the head trainer is the main man, the players are also to be blamed. The guys here aren't exactly the type you expect to fight to the end.

Let's just hope next season will be much better.