06 Apr 2014: Vitesse - Ajax

[ajaxcolombia]

If mosainder leaves I hope we get botteghin cause denswil is a liability

[Tom_]

If mosainder leaves I hope we get botteghin cause denswil is a liability

Yeah, they're making him looking pretty bad. They have some extremely fast attackers though.

[Dave the mac]

Nice start to the 2nd half. Great goal by Sigthorsson.
What a pace to the match. A bit lucky to be 1-1 at this point.

[ajaxcolombia]

Oh boy de sa right now would be great cause we are finding space on the wings!

[ajaxcolombia]

Meh we are timing our passes badly.

[Tom_]

Despite the terrible first half we turned the tide a bit and actually had plenty of chances to take the lead...

[Dave the mac]

Wow - what a game. Vitesse in the 1st half were excellent. Very entertaining, and a draw was a great result.

[ajaxcolombia]

We should be happy with the draw given how bad we were in the first half but had de boer been more proactive with the substitutions we might have won.

[SPL]

Well a much better 2nd half , even by Denswil,and we could even have nicked it . After that first half I am more than happy with the draw.

After the NAC game the other week we were all fed up and full of gloom. However if we had been told after today we are 6 points clear and only 1 team can catch us and our GD is plus 10 over them we would all be delighted.

Blind gets a yellow for a bad foul and misses next week, V Rhijn gets a silly yellow and will miss next week.

Fword will drop points at PSV next week and we should hopefully be champs with a win over ADO.

If we do make it 4 in arow this is clearly the weakest squad we have had over those 4 years as we just cannot score goals

[Orange14]

As terrible as the club was in the first half they were quite fine in the 2nd and almost stole a goal to take all the points. Defense settled down and Cillessen did not have do nearly as much work. Mentally the club was much tougher and that's the way they need to approach the full 90 minutes. Good to see Denswil get his head in the match. The club still needs much better handling speed in the midfield and there were chances to stretch the Vitesse defense in the last 20 minutes but they couldn't take advantage of it.

Player Ratings:

Cillessen (8) - outstanding example of goal keeping in the first half though he did have to do a lot of kicking again as there was no outlet available
Boilsen (6.5) - got beat a couple of times but played well until he came off late in the second half; had some nice runs on offense
Denswil (4.5) - good second half almost got him an average mark for the match
Veltman (7) - some Koeman-like runs with the ball only to be let down on the final touch, pretty good defending as well
van Rhijn (5.5) - really had a chance to deliver a couple of good balls into the middle and didn't
Blind (6) - above average today
Duarte (7) - showed why he should be a starter today, good ball control and had some nice defensive plays as well
Klaassen (5.5) - more of a Siem de Jong match unfortunately
Bojan (6) - decent enough
Sigthorrson (6) - very nice goal and that was it; another poor match with the ball at his feet and did he even win one ball in the air?
Schöne (6) - OK match but no really outstanding plays
Poulsen (6) - on to add some defensive steel and did just that
de Sa (6) - added some pace on the left side down the stretch
Kishna (NR) - on too late to make any judgement

Feyenoord wins 2-0 so they are still mathematically alive.

[rjf1]

It was A Tale of Two Halves. We played so much better following the break and could have -- should have -- actually won it. Funny about expectations -- at the end of the first half, I would have been thrilled for us to get a point out of the game. Now, I'm a little disappointed we didn't get all three -- still, we can feel positive about the game after all, and are a point closer to the goal. Three is now the magic number -- any combination of points we gain or the F'ers drop that works out to three, and we have got the 4th.

[SPL]

agree Cillessen was our best player. Veltman and Duarte were our best outfielders.

[rjf1]

I thought Bojan had a good second half -- kept possession when under pressure and was able to dribble out of tight situations, and made a number of good layoffs. IMO his play went a long way to the improvement in the 2nd half.

[Kowalczyk]

They played us off the park in the first half...

Second half was better. Especially the first half of the second half. But we didn't deserve more than one point.

K.

[Arthur]

Vitesse basically played all or nothing in the first half and was completely exhausted after that. To me it's more disappointing that Ajax couldn't take advantage of this in the second half than that they were outplayed in the first.