Ajaxtalk

Another Ajax home match is on the schedule next week. Police Union still has not reached agreement and a work stoppage may happen. Will Ajax actual play their third league match of the season?

A little rusty at the opening, understandable because of no competitive match in a month. Some of the passes were a bit week but as the half wore on Ajax were dominant with some good tight passing in the box. Both goals were well taken and there were opportunities for more. Just before halftime the Sittard defender was sent off, taking down Akpom who would be in on goal. Probably will be some subs in the 2nd half.

So far so good

Very comfortable in the 2nd half against 10 men .7th in table , 2 games in hand it looks alot better than 15th where we were before tonight.

This match ended in the added minute of the first have when a poor back pass forced the Sittard defender to pull down Akpom just outside the box. That's a direct Red for obstructing a goal scoring opportunity. Ajas were already up 2-0 at the time with fine goals from Taylor and Traore. The second half would prove to be a shooting gallery and it was. Ajax were rusty in the first 10 minutes of the match, a result of a month-long layoff resulting from the police strike and international break. One into the rhythm of the game with some fine interior quick passing to free players. Only some fine saves from the Sittard keeper kept the score from getting wildly out of hand. The defense was more than adequate bar the one hard shot that clanged off Pasveer's post. Farioli loves clean sheets. Games will now start coming fast and furious as the Europa Leage in it's new format begins next week. Injuries seem to be having an effect. Brobbey was missing today and I'm not sure what the reason was. Sutalo was subbed off at halftime but that might have been tactical. Berghis will be out longer than first expected Hlynsson is still getting over a muscle strain and Mannswerk is a long term injury. Davy Klaassen was saluted by the crowd as a returning hero with a full head of hair.

Player Ratings:

Pasveer (6) - had nothing to do and thanked the post for keeping the lone shot out of the goal
Rensch (7) - had one early mistake but played very well the rest of the way, very active on offense and scored a nice goal when the keeper thought he was going to cross leaving a big gap to shoot at
Sutalo (6.5) - solid game in the half he played
Baas (7) - continues to improve and who of us knew he would be a starting CB? Scored the second goal on a nice header
Hato (7.5) - decent enough and after watching the highlights I bumped his rating up because of two outstanding assists
Henderson (7) - solid game from the Captain with some good free kicks and one great shot that took a fine save to keep out
Taylor (7.5) - excellent match and his goal winner inside of the first 10 minutes was a thing of beauty
Fitz-Jim (7) - did a fine job of picking out the open man and moving into space so he could get the ball back
Traore (6.5) - looks be finally getting match fit (what took so long) and his goal was nice, still had some chance he could have done better with
Akpom (7) - filled in for the absent Brobbey and acquited himself well getting a second half goal
Godts (6.5) - looks like he is playing with Neres-like constraint (he took my advice to watch some tapes) and is not trying to press things too much, just missed an assist when a sliding Akpom could not put it in
Rugani (6) - solid enough playing in the second half, and ever the Italian, greeted Klaassen's entrance with a kiss on the cheek
van den Boomen (6) - solid and had a couple of nice shots on target
Klaassen (6) - decent as a late sub
Weghorst (5) - on for the final 25 minutes but not much of a factor
Rassmussen (NR) - on late during shooting practice and had some nice passes to open team mates.

Go Ahead Eagle up this weekend on the road.

As some of you have observed, there were indeed a few stray passes in the first half and could've been punished by a better team.

However, you can see the hand of Farioli more and more, in the way the team is passing and moving the ball. It's more or less the same squad as last year, but there's so much more dynamism in the team. I'm loving it. We are well on our journey of putting the Ajax puzzle back together. We obviously need an injection of talent in a few places, but I like what I'm seeing thus far.

I noticed 8 of our starting team cost nothing ,Godts only a training fee so basically 9 cost nothing and 3 of the 5 subs cost nothing.Shows how crazy those 2 summers of 2022 and 2023 were paying 100m out in each.

All that transfer money from the great ten Hag clubs squandered

Fortuna were pretty poor so I’m still going to reserve my judgement until we play some stronger sides. But… we struggled to beat teams at Fortuna’s level last season so an stress-free 5-0 victory does seem to indicate at least some sort of improvement.