24 Feb 2008: NAC Breda - Ajax

[Kowalczyk]

philips won, so ... who cares ?

If we lose all the tough away matches that are still ahead, we can still very easily crash out of the top five (and the play-offs), so of course it's important to win a direct battle for second place...

Tsss.

K.

[Over Pasanens Head]

philips won, so ... who cares ?

At least 3 of us from the UK who travelled over for the match + Ko and Micha who made sure we all behaved ourselves.

I thought you were a suporter Philippe - seems that I have got that wrong

[SE6Ajacied]

philips won, so ... who cares ?

At the risk of jumping on a bandwaggon here of responses here, I'm sure that the assorted supporters of Walsall FC, Crystal Palace, Partick Thistle, Worthing FC, Houston Dynamo's and probably many more who frequent this forum will agree with me that there is much more to enjoying a game of football than that game putting you top of the league and 3 points clear or whatever.

In the UK we tend to call that the "Manchester United" (or Chelsea etc - as you wish) Syndrome.

Yesterday was one of my favourite games of the season, not because we played particularly well or even that we beat a particularly great team (present form accepted). My enjoyment was down to the fact it was exciting, a real ding-dong game where you didn't know which way it would finish from the first kick to the last.

I actually find that more enjoyable than say, beating F-word 3-0 at home when the result was hardly ever in doubt. That's great as well of course, pleasing on the eye as well as the mind and great for bragging rights (not so much in London or dare I say France) but just not enjoyable in the same sense as yesterday.

It's a pity PSV won (though De Graafschap did their best by going almost immediately in front) but it won't ruin my enjoyment for the rest of the season if they continue to do so - we live to fight another day (or year).

As usual I was doing 200 things at once so missed some of the game yesterday but I'm going to watch the whole thing over again this morning. I didn't do that with the F-word game.....

Over and out, rant over from me.

[saddlerian]

philips won, so ... who cares ?

At the risk of jumping on a bandwaggon here of responses here, I'm sure that the assorted supporters of Walsall FC, Crystal Palace, Partick Thistle, Worthing FC, Houston Dynamo's and probably many more who frequent this forum will agree with me that there is much more to enjoying a game of football than that game putting you top of the league and 3 points clear or whatever.

I agree whole heartedly! The matches in Amsterdam are almost a weekend experience...winning isn't the be all and end all! The build up before the game is important...a meeting of supporters, and cultures! The game...it's great if we win, but, hey, there's more to life than three points! Then there's the post match session when the "would be coaches" decide what went wrong!

A win----great, but the experience is most important.....as long as the defence doesn't spoil everything!!!!

Roll on next Sunday!!!

[Philippe]

philips won, so ... who cares ?

(...)

I thought you were a suporter Philippe - seems that I have got that wrong

1- I don't mind if you consider me as a supporter or not, and wonder why you think you are qualified to decide it

2- Of course it's always great fun to attend an Ajax game

3- Most supporters fake or true are fed up with years of mediocrity and find it hard to find interest in games with not hope of winning anything

4- with the play-offs system, it does not matter at all if we finish number 2 or number 5

[Over Pasanens Head]

philips won, so ... who cares ?

(...)

I thought you were a suporter Philippe - seems that I have got that wrong

1- I don't mind if you consider me as a supporter or not, and wonder why you think you are qualified to decide it

2- Of course it's always great fun to attend an Ajax game

3- Most supporters fake or true are fed up with years of mediocrity and find it hard to find interest in games with not hope of winning anything

4- with the play-offs system, it does not matter at all if we finish number 2 or number 5

1. My qualification, or as I would call it an opinion, was based on your statement. If you make statements that sound as though you are not a supporter but just somebody that comes onto this forum and makes continuous negative statements then I think that this is one valid conclusion that I could reach.

2. Agreed

3. Believe that Ian's and Brian's posts have more than answered this one. In a season there can only be one winner and 17 losers so what makes you think that Ajax have the devine right to be that 1 team year in year out?

4. I would much rather finish 2nd than 5th as it will have meant that we must have won more games and surely this must be a good thing.

[Kowalczyk]

100% agreed, OPH.

In addition to that: if you finish 2nd, your play-off opponent will be the #5. If you finish -for example - 4th, your play-off opponent will be the #3, who are normally a better team than the #5.

So, yes, of course it does matter.

K.

[peter]

That depends. I would prefer Feyenoord in any given situation. It doesn't matter if we finish second or third as long as we draw Feyenoord.

[aveslacker]

Though this year, numbers 2-5 are likely to be pretty close together in terms of points, so I don't know how much advantge being number 2 really is. Nonetheless, it does make a difference -- I would think that it is always important to have the club finish as high as possible.

Although I really hate the playoffs.

[ajaxusa]

Match report by Mr. Ian Walker is now available on Ajax USA:

Ajax come from behind to win at Breda

However, there is something seriously f*cked up about the display template. Very, very weird, since I did not touch the template, and the same template is used for other matches, which (thankfully) look fine.

I will hold off linking from the home page until I know what's up.

Nice work Ian! I hope you don't mind my editorial touches. Can't help myself.

[ajaxusa]

Fixed! It was so simple, even a child could figure it out. Which is why I needed to wake up Ryan so he could fix it for me.