New Players for Ajax

[aveslacker]

Hopefully the ultimate result of this is that we have more balance in offense. Instead of KJH and Sneijder as the scoring threats, we have KJH, Suarez, Kennedy, and Luque. I also expect that, since our wingers are better, KJH may really get a lot of quality service and therefore more goals.

Also, I sensed last season that KJH got a lot better towards the end at building up attacks by coming upfield to get the ball and distribute towards the wings. Hopefully that continues.

I just hope that our defense holds up.

[bluedaddy19]

Totally agree with OPH.

I think we actually have more quality available upfront, and definitely more options. We have Suarez and Luque for Babel, Kennedy and Rommedahl for De Mul and Urzaiz and Luque as extra options behind KJH.

luque is no #9 option (at least i hope not!), he is a pure left winger

even though we cant "replace" wesley, i'd sure like to get a proper #10 type player before the window closes, at least to have as an option when the eventual injuries hit hard

[SPL]

Now we are out of CL I doubt we will sign anybody else.

[SoCal Ajacied]

Yeah I'm soo excited to see how Luque aka Lulleke is gonna fuck up big time like all the other fuckers !!!
here comes nothing again..then sell huntelaar to man united in the winter stop.

[Philippe]

Suarez vs Babel ....... Suarez wins

Kennedy vs De Mul ........ Kennedy wins

I don't think topclubs from England or Spain would have signed Suarez, Kennedy, or Luque.

That's how our lazy and greedy management is making money for the shareholders : selling players at the worst moment.

[666]

Our shareholders got paid only once since Ajax hit the stock exchange.

That one time dividend payout (back in 2004) was a little over €2.5 million.

Ajax itself holds about 70% of its own stock, i.e. 70% of the payout flows right back into the club. The external shareholders received a grand total of €757.000 since 1998. That's 2.8% of what we made on the Sneijder sale.

Take home message: our lazy and greedy management is not making any money for the shareholders.

That's how our lazy and greedy management is making money for the shareholders...

[Philippe]

Take home message: our lazy and greedy management is not making any money for the shareholders.

You must be joking : take a look at the share price.

[Kowalczyk]

That's how our lazy and greedy management is making money for the shareholders...

Thanks for that.

I was just going to reply, but your explanation is far more convincing than mine would have been. The 'lazy and greedy' statement is a simplistic charicature of the Ajax management. It is not constructive and will not make the club (or the team) better.

Fontein, Slop and Van Geel (the Ajax directors) are just as gutted about yesterday evening as we are. I can guarantee you that.

We can fire them all, for all I care (I wouldn't be against it, but I don't think it would help, either), but the reason for this umpteenth tragedy in Europe goes much deeper. I just posted our long string of European defeats to 'small-timers' in another thread: it happened under Jan Wouters, under Co Adriaanse, under Ronald Koeman, under Henk ten Cate. Not under Danny Blind, but he 'compensated' it with one of the worst domestic campaigns I can remember, and the worst football I have ever seen Ajax play.

So, it's not about the coaches. They all worked under specific circumstances, they all made mistakes, they all did good things. They were all professional people, and they did whatever they could. But none of them could really make Ajax over-achieve for a change. We've underachieved under all of these coaches, domestically and/or internationally.

We lost to Lausanne, we lost to Copenhagen, we lost to Tel-Aviv, to Bruges, to Slavia Prague. This happened with Zlatan, with Van der Vaart, with Sneijder and with Stam.

So please: let's not chop people's heads off because we want scapegoats. The facts tell the story: no matter who's in charge and no matter who are on the pitch, Ajax are under-achieving in Europe in grotesque style and it appears that there is something fundamentally wrong with this club.

Any thoughts? (no names please, but constructive thoughts)

K.

[666]

You must be joking : take a look at the share price.

Share price dropped 25% soon after Ajax hit the stock exchange and has remained so ever since.

1998: €11.35 per share
2007: €8.46 per share

...it appears that there is something fundamentally wrong with this club.

Any thoughts?

Wrote a long story about that in the dutch part of the forum. Too lazy to translate it all (it's mostly numbers anyway), so here's the short version:

Average first-squad residence time of homegrown players has dropped over 50% since our glory days of the early 70s: from 8 to less than 3.5 years.

Educating our players takes just as long as it used to, but the reward period has shortened by a factor 3 or 4.

Sneijder makes a good example: he's been a starting lineup regular for 3.5 years, then left after one good season. Babel: 3 years of regular appearance in our first squad. Financial yield: €17M. League and european yield: zero. We might sell Urby for a killer price next year, but he's played the starring role in 2 CL fuckups, so even if we manage to sell him for 20M the net result of his traineeship will be negative.

Compare this to van Basten (a joke of a transfer fee, but 4 seasons of quality time at Ajax), Bergkamp (15M, 3 years of top notch play in de Meer), or Litmanen (4M, but 5 years of kicking ass in europe).

The ugly truth is that we're not making any money on our youngsters anymore. We're selling them so soon that we invest more in their education than we receive in transfer fees.


How to get out of this mess? The best way would be to keep our Sneijders for a year or two (or three) longer, but as long as the EU & UEFA won't turn the clock back to pre-Bosman years we'll have to think of something else.

FC Porto is in the same boat as Ajax, but they sold Anderson for 31.5M, Pepe 30M, Carvalho 30M, Deco 21M, Ferreira 20M, Maniche 16M, Jardel 16M, Andrade 13M, so they had plenty of cash to invest in suitable replacements. We got close to nothing for Vaart and de Jong, and nothing at all for Grygera, Pienaar, and Trabelsi.

So there's the answer: if we can't keep our Sneijders and Babels and van der Vaarts and Zlatans, we'll have to sell 'em for FC Porto-like prices so we have some cash to buy more Huntelaars and Suarez instead of Rommedahls and Collins.

[ZoefdeHaas]

Last nights game was a basic loss of passion from players of a "big" club, which is becoming more typical (Man Utd, Barcelona etc.).

Small clubs still hold players who may not be as skilled as Ajax players, but their attitude and thinking are definatley better.

But us fans cant say much either, Slavia was a sell out, while the ArenA wasnt, we didnt give full home support when we should have

[Philippe]

Share price dropped 30% soon after Ajax hit the stock exchange and has remained so ever since.

Not really : that's how it goes, just a few figures

05/2003 : 3,50
09/2003 : 4,30
01/2004 : 5,30
05/2004 : 7,30
09/2004 : 8,60
01/2005 : 9,00
08/2005 : 9,70
01/2006 : 8,70
05/2007 : 8,30

[Philippe]

Any thoughts? (no names please, but constructive thoughts)

K.

You are funny, we are in deep shit but no one of the people in charge is responsible ?

Maybe this thought of yours does not help to make things bettter.

By the way, take a look at this www.afca.nl

[ZoefdeHaas]

Do you know who will profit from this besides Slavia?

PS-GAY

[Philippe]

during the last few years, P$v had rather decent results in the CL, and did much better than we did, that's food for thought, even for those who think the UEFA is the one to blame, or the weather ...

[Kowalczyk]

You are funny, we are in deep shit but no one of the people in charge is responsible ?

Did I say that...?

Of course coach and directors are responsible. That's why I wrote: we can fire them all, for all I care (I wouldn't be against it).

But I'm also convinced that it won't change anything. There is 'deeper problem' at the club that has, apparently, nothing to do with who's in charge or who are on the pitch.

That's the problem I wanted to discuss, ceteris paribus. I'm not saying the responsible ones must stay; I just wanted to leave them out of this particular discussion, because a 'scapegoat hunt' misses the point, in my opinion.

F*ck's sake... Come on...

K.

[666]

just a few figures...

Thanx for proving my point. Our shares averaged 8 to 9 euros within a year after issue, dropped like a stone in the overall stock exchange plunge, climbed back to their pre-crash rate in line with the overall stock market recovery, and stabilized at their old rate. The Chivu/Zlatan/Sneijder/Babel deals didn't have any measurable impact on our stock market value. It's been 8 to 9 euros since early 2004, just like it was back from '98 to '00.

[K.J. Huntelaar]

Apparently ajax sent 22mio € offer for Modrič which was denied by dinamo Zagreb. According to croatian newspaper. He' s one of the greatest young players out there IMO, so...

[Manneken Pis]

just a few figures...

Thanx for proving my point. Our shares averaged 8 to 9 euros within a year after issue, dropped like a stone in the overall stock exchange plunge, climbed back to their pre-crash rate in line with the overall stock market recovery, and stabilized at their old rate. The Chivu/Zlatan/Sneijder/Babel deals didn't have any measurable impact on our stock market value. It's been 8 to 9 euros since early 2004, just like it was back from '98 to '00.

C'mon 666, you're missing the point...

"When in doubt, blame the;

- fat and/or,
- lazy and/or,
- corrupt

- capitalist and/or
- businessmen and/or
- boardmembers."

[Over Pasanens Head]

Here goes for my 2d's worth:

Unfortunately time marches on and the world that Ajax inhabits is different to the world it inhabited in the 90's. This world will continue to evolve and we (as in the Ajax management) have to find the ways to evolve along with it. We all have to do that in our working environment and Ajax should not be any different.

If the current management structure cannot cope with this then they should resign and allow people to come on board that can.
However, this change is not a guaranteed recipe for success and maybe the club will never be able to repeat its past glories even to the level of being classed as a top 16 European Club.
If that is the case then they should explain this to the fans instead of raising expectations.
Ajax were a small club who achieved wonderous things. The problem now is that they believe themselves to be a big club but are producing crapish results.
For Ajax to succeed on the big stage we need a large number of exceptional youngsters to come through at the same time. It is no good the odd ones and twos coming through as when the next lot of ones and twos come through in a couple of years the originals have left.

[SPL]

I have just put my thoughts under last nights game so you might want to swap it to this thread .Cheers.

[Manneken Pis]

The point about a salary cap is a good one and the fact that 4 teams from EPL Italy and Spain are allowed in just makes those teams richer.

We were doing ok back in 2003/04 but IMO things went wrong on 31 August 2004 when they sold Zlatan on the cheap and did not replace him.
(He was prepared to spend another season with us.)

2004/05 was a crap season with no real striker and VDVaart losing his way.
We all hated Koeman and he went. Danny Blind was not up to the job but did bring us CL footy.In 2005/6 he coached a team knowing that over half of them were going to walk out on Bosmans.

HTC is another Blind ie a good background coach but not up to bringing this club back to what is expected.

2 Augusts in a row we have been disgraced by defeats against poor
teams in CL.
We are all moaning about that last day when we failed to win the title by 1 goal but in truth AZ should have buried Excelsior and won the title.

Turning to this summer. Babel was made an offer that no 20 year old would turn down ie £40000 per week and a signing on fee of £2m . we end up with about £ 9m for a young striker who does not score goals regularly!

As for Wes, no one can complain about him as he has given us 4/5 good years and £19M was too good to turn down.

Apart from Suarez the rest of the signings on paper do not inspire.Luque has hardly played for 2 years and Colin and Delorge have not been that great in English Championship. Urzaiz is nearly 36. What are we doing signing those last 3 named players!!! Kennedy looks reasonable and Rommendahl has spent the last 3 years looking crap at Charlton.

Next summer, KJH, Heitinga ,Urby,Stam and Davids will go.Maduro will also go probably for nothing as we do not want to give him another contract.
Gabri will likely move along with some of HTC's signings.

It seems we will have to put up with him this season and hope we can bring in someone with quality next season ie Van Gaal should have taken over from Koeman.

These are my thoughts and I am sure they will be shot down by some of
you.

Not shot down by me... I agree with most of your observations.

[Philippe]

just a few figures...

Thanx for proving my point.

The share price average growth rate since 2003 is very high and has no connection with our football results.

Which means that as far as financial results are concerned AFC Ajax is an healthy investment. Even though we have not won significant trophies in years.

So financial situation can be very good even though our football is terrible.

[666]

The share price average growth rate since 2003 is very high and has no connection with our football results

The share price average growth since 2004 is zero. The share price average growth between 1998 and 2003 is way below zero. Both figures have no connection whatsover with our football results. They have no connection with our transfer market results either. In contrast, the 2004 spike coincided with winning the league.

Ajax stock hit the market nine years ago. Eight of those years it stayed flat or went down, one year back in 2004 it hitched a ride on the overall stock market crash recovery. And you single out this one-year aberrance (which you try to spread over 4 seasons to make it seem like a trend) as evidence that our board is making a profit for our shareholders?

Ajax shares are as profitable as a bad stack of lottery tickets. From the dozens of millions we made on the transfer market we payed less than one million to our shareholders. A drop in the bucket compared to the 25% loss of value of said shares. The rest was wasted on the likes of Sikora and Machlas, our expensive adventures in places like Antwerp, and filling the gap between income and player wages. The infamous "kleedkamer 2" cost us a fortune.


Back on topic: new players for Ajax. We might as well spend our money on a midfielder or two, because none of it is going to the shareholders anyway. And even if it does, 73% flows right back into our war chest.

[Philippe]

The share price average growth rate since 2003 is very high and has no connection with our football results

The share price average growth since 2004 is zero. The share price average growth between 1998 and 2003 is way below zero.

The average groth rate of the AFC Ajax from may 2003 (3,50 euros) to may 2007 (8,30 euros) is +24% per year. Which is bloody enormous.

figures have no connection whatsover with our football results.

Could not put this any better : AFC Ajax as a company is financially healthy in spite of bad football results.

[666]

The average groth rate of the AFC Ajax from may 2003 (3,50 euros) to may 2007 (8,30 euros) is +24% per year. Which is bloody enormous.

The average growth rate over the years 2005, 2006 and 2007 is exactly zero percent. We hit €8.30 at the end of 2004, and we're at €8.30 today. The current board didn't pay any dividend and the shares stayed flat as a plastic cup of Arena beer.
The AEX climbed from 300 to 500 over the same period. Those shares paid off a dividend as well, which Ajax managed only once during its 9-year residence on the stock exchange.

The spike in 2004 and the one-time peanuts-for-dividend return (14 cents on a €8+ share) was a one-year exception to the nine-year rule that Ajax shares stay flat or go down and don't yield any dividend at all.

Our players are the big winners here, because they pocket all the cash.

AFC Ajax as a company is financially healthy in spite of bad football results.

Doesn't make any difference to our shareholders, because they're crying all the way to the bank. Back in '98 we sold our shares for DFL 50M, today they're worth DFL 36.5M. Even if you add the '04 dividend they're still DFL 13M short.