23 Nov 2013: Ajax - Heracles Almelo

[Orange14]

Fairly routine victory over a mediocre opponent. Probably could have seen 3-4 more goals had some better finishing and passing been in evidence (Fischer & Serero should have done better on their open chances). The team did a real nice job of pressing all over the field and kept Heracles off balance. As a result the back defense had little to do and Cillessen got lots of kicking in during the match.

Player ratings:

Cillessen (6) - maybe made one routine save and kicked the ball pretty well
Boilesen (6.5) - did well going forward and his passes were good
Moisander (6.5) - didn't have to defend much at all
Veltman (6.5) - same as Moisander and his pass to Hoesen for the first goal was sublime
van Rhijn (6) - one dumb play which fortunately was not punished but otherwise solid
Blind (7) - really solid today
Serero (6) - still not the answer in the midfield but decent today
Klaasen (6.5) - wicked header to score the third goal
Fischer (6) - got on the scoreboard finally on a tap in
Hoesen (6.5) - nice finish to get the early goal
Schöne (6.5) - decent enough and worked hard to set up others
Poulsen (6) - no drop off in quality coming on for Blind
de Sa (6.5) - nice work on the wing today and pressed his man hard
Denswil (6) - interesting that FdB put him up front with Hoesen, going to a 3 man back line

Home to Barca in the CL on Tuesday. It will be interesting with both teams missing key players though Barca's depth is much better than ours.