04 Feb 2011: Ajax - De Graafschap

[Kowalczyk]

Right then, here's a match thread for this evening's Eredivisie home game against De Graafschap. Kick-off time at the ArenA: 20.45 CET.

Anita, De Zeeuw, El Hamdaoui and De Jong have been declared fit. Here's the squad:

Maarten Stekelenburg
Jeroen Verhoeven
Gregory van der Wiel
Toby Alderweireld
Jan Vertonghen
Vurnon Anita
Eyong Enoh
Miralem Sulejmani
Christian Eriksen
Mounir El Hamdaoui
Siem de Jong
André Ooijer
Daley Blind
Rasmus Lindgren
Demy de Zeeuw
Oleguer
Lorenzo Ebecilio
Aras Özbiliz

Edit: Hmm, there's a report on Ajax.nl now that says that De Zeeuw is "not entirely fit". But he's in the squad...? Strange.

K.

[SPL]

Line up

Steks

V d wiel, Alderweireld, Vertonghen, Blind

de Jong, Eriksen,Enoh

Sulejmani, El Hamdaoui, Ebecilio

For them Waterman , Hersi and Poepon means 11 players from our academy plus of course 5 on our subs bench .

[Amol]

Streams anyone? myp2p.eu is blocked at work and ummm rojadirecta.org has been seized by US authorities!!

[SPL]

my p2p does not allow dutch football . sopcast will have either MM or DSC

[Orange14]

SopCast are scheduled to have the stream at DSC5 and it's listed in the SopCast Directory. You can also try here: http://www.vrijblijvend.com/streams.html

[Amol]

Can't use sopcast at work. Will keep trolling around for streams.

[Orange14]

Can't use sopcast at work. Will keep trolling around for streams.

The link I posted will open up an embedded TVU stream (you still have to download the patch to get it to work). Don't know if that helps or not.

[Amol]

Yeah I know about that site. Had the network admins at work swarm all over me the last time I used that....lol

[Amol]

How are we doing guys?

[souras84]

shitty pretty much . we are trapped by de graafschaps 5 men defence

[souras84]

wonderful combination between el h and ebecilio and very good skills by the kid... and el h scores again!

[Orange14]

Was wondering whether anyone would score in this very dull half. Nice goal mouth scramble and El Hamdaoui puts it away.

[SPL]

1 more goal will be enough imo

[souras84]

one more to make our lives easier!!

[souras84]

we need smth to refresh the team

[souras84]

i believe we're all right now

[Orange14]

Nice to win a Friday match and put pressure on the two teams directly above us. We still are too static in the midfield which leads to unnecessary giveaways. Not really threatened on defense except on the bonehead pass that Enoh made leaving Stekelenberg exposed. Sulejmani kept losing width which also led to congestion in the middle. I though de Jong had a good match holding the ball up though his passing could be a lot crisper as well. The amazing thing about the match to me? Wonderful job by the match official. Called the game very well and all the cards he handed out were deserved. Other officials could do well to watch this performance.

[SPL]

well taken goal by Siem set up again by Ebecilio , who had a good game, he does impress me.Good that El Ham is back and scoring , he is being interviewed at the moment and sounds very happy . He did run out of steam after 2 months without a game. We were made to work hard tonight and at the end apart from old man Steks we had a bunch of young kids out there with only Enoh not from the academy

[Kowalczyk]

Wow - this was spectacularly poor.

K.

[Orange14]

Wow - this was spectacularly poor.

K.

Yes, but it was three points. Midway through the second half I felt that we were going hold on for a 1-0 win. With so many changes in this team over last year, I suspect that we are looking at 1-0 or 2-0 matches the remainder of the way. This team is going to have to play rock solid defense going forward; there can be no sloppy passes such as the one Enoh made. If we get punished for an early goal, it is going to be difficult to climb back. This being said, I am extremely pleased at the way these young kids are playing! We have two more winnable league matches (Roda and VVV) before the big showdown in Eindhoven. I'm keeping the faith!!

[SPL]

Biggest problem will be scoring goals . Last night we had just one spare forward ,Ozbiliz,and I am not sure he is good enough at this level yet .
The only injured forward Cvitanich wont make much difference when he is fit which wont be until next month. Castillion is not ready after along injury , Jozefzoon has shot his chances , Lukoki is clearly not ready and finally Suk is not good enough .

Basically we have 3 forwards plus de Jong and he played better last night as a proper midfielder.Thus I think we will struggle to win enough games to win the title.

[Orange14]

Accurate picture of yesterday's match by 11 tegen 11: http://11tegen11.wordpress.com/2011/02/ ... explained/ Interesting that Roda play essentially the same formation.

[GangstaRiB]

Accurate picture of yesterday's match by 11 tegen 11: http://11tegen11.wordpress.com/2011/02/ ... explained/ Interesting that Roda play essentially the same formation.

That's true, although Roda seems a bit less 'disciplined' in defensive play. And Roda is on a losing streak since resuming the competition, so confidence is low.

Disturbing for me is that Ajax is fragile when opponents play either a tactical solid game, or they have a sort of 'schock and awe' tactic. Utrecht blew Ajax away with power football, and Ajax didn't have answer to that. And De Graafschap made it difficult for Ajax by playing very compact.