Ajaxtalk

philippe schreef:Something stinks about some fans lack of support for El Hamdaoui.
It seems hardly arguable that we would have been better off with him yesterday against S.Moscow.

i agree, management is being a total joke, costing us everything with this shit

they sell suarez, treat el hamdaoui like shit and get no replacements for either at the deadline, leaving us WOEFULLY lacking in attack

it is all highly pissing me off

aveslacker schreef:

Orange14 schreef:

Kowalczyk schreef:Peace negotiations with Frank de Boer will start on Monday!

K.

Is it a negotiation or more like "...my way or the highway?"

More like, "Holy shit! We need someone who can score!"

exactly!!

the management has murdered our season

bluedaddy19 schreef: the management has murdered our season

Yes ! Fuck them !

El H seems to have had an attitude problem since Frank took over . Is there any point in trying to get him back in the team? The season is over and El H will be off in the summer.

philippe schreef:

bluedaddy19 schreef: the management has murdered our season

Yes ! Fuck them !

Unless the two of you are going to pony up €50M to buy some new players you better find another team to support. The money isn't there and the economics of the Dutch league are not going to make it mysteriously appear. To say this is management's fault is a gross over simplification of something that has been creeping up on this team for ten years now. It's not going to be remedied by a prayer that we are going to buy the next great striker or defender. I would urge you to back and look at the individual player postings on this forum and you can read how excited everyone was about the purchase/transfer of El Hamdaoui, Oleguer, Atouba, Wielaert, etc., etc.

For me, I would rather see the efforts bolstered around our youth program and some cooperative agreements with some Danish teams who want our system to polish their young players. We are not going to be in a position of buying players to fill gaps in our lineup (barring some rich oil money coming our way)

Orange14 schreef:

philippe schreef:

bluedaddy19 schreef: the management has murdered our season

Yes ! Fuck them !

Unless the two of you are going to pony up €50M to buy some new players you better find another team to support.

Who the hell do you think you are, yesman ?

But there is some truth in what you say. We must be idiots to support a club knowing its managers are more concerned by its P&L than by sport trophies.

philippe schreef:
Who the hell do you think you are, yesman ?

But there is some truth in what you say. We must be idiots to support a club knowing its managers are more concerned by its P&L than by sport trophies.

Hardly a yes man, and someone who has followed the club both in person and from afar since 1970 (lived in the country for two years doing a science fellowship in the 1970s as well). I think if you carefully read this: http://swissramble.blogspot.com/search/label/Ajax you will understand the predicament the club is in. The big factor is that we will never be able to generate the type of revenue needed to make the kind of purchases that we all (including me) want. The television revenue is the defining factor (we can buy all the shirts, mugs and other Ajax merchandise until our homes are a veritable shrine but it's still a drop in the bucket, and yes I do buy new shirts frequently).

We are all in agreement that we need a striker. Where will we find one. Two options: 1) develop one from the youth system (not likely given past history here and it's not clear whether Castillion is the answer) of 2) purchase one (where will we purchase one? Scandinavia where we seem to have a pipeline these days of from another Dutch club; in the latter case we will have to pay a high premium based on past history and can you identify the next KJH? Is it van Wolfswinkel or someone else?).

I'm as devoted to this club as anyone else but am realistic about the prospects. We still field more home grown players than any of the other top teams in the Eredivisie, something to be proud of. We cannot paper over the deficiencies or improve the mental capabilities of some of the head cases on our team (Sulejmani, El Hamdaoui, Enoh (to some extent when considering he has no sense of the field of play out there).

I'm welcome to any solutions you might have (seriously!!)

I already did read this article which is very interesting indeed.
The point is IMO that no matter what we will never be able to do with home grown players only. As we always did, now and then we have to get players from other clubs.
And at the time when we sold Suarez and Emanuelson, we needed new blood. Right away.
In addition we had bad luck with the El Hamdaoui's case, who has already taken too long to solve, and with Stekelenburgs injury.
Toby states today that we would have won the title with Suarez and Emanuelson. Sure. But they're gone. We might have had a chance without them but with El Hamdaoui playing, and with another goalie.

I agree with what 14 says. I myself see AJAX like a top Greek team such as olympiakos or panathinaikos. That is because the league is a bit better than the Greek league, the caliber of players attracted is small and of course we are giants in our country, which means we can buy top players that play in smaller teams. But all this until they want to go away from Holland.

Plus I think Enoh is a player good for the De Jong (Nigel) type of play or Obi Mikel. Thats sweeping and taking the ball away. He desperately needs an Essien, Makelele, intelligent type of midfielder next to him. Unless that happens, we will expect from him to be what he isnt. So 3 midfielders means a damn good trio.

And something else, is it clever to buy Schaars?

philippe schreef:I already did read this article which is very interesting indeed.
The point is IMO that no matter what we will never be able to do with home grown players only. As we always did, now and then we have to get players from other clubs.
And at the time when we sold Suarez and Emanuelson, we needed new blood. Right away.
In addition we had bad luck with the El Hamdaoui's case, who has already taken too long to solve, and with Stekelenburgs injury.
Toby states today that we would have won the title with Suarez and Emanuelson. Sure. But they're gone. We might have had a chance without them but with El Hamdaoui playing, and with another goalie.

Who could have predicted that our two top keepers would get hurt? That's just bad luck. I think everyone on this forum knew that Suarez was going to leave in January and most blame the club for not coming up with the replacement. Maybe their thinking was El Hamdaoui was the player, I don't know and of course Jol had a lot to do with the choice (according to some El Hamdaoui has always been a difficult player for management; in retrospect it would have been nice to keep Pantelic but I can understand the thinking of not giving an over 30 player a multi-year contract). Too bad we did not go after Luuk de Jong when he was available. I don't think there were many options in January.

Orange is right, we're not Man City or any other sugar daddy owned club. We have always been a trading company, our strength lies in our ability to groom a player, sell him, rinse and repeat. We have been seriously unlucky with the Bosman ruling, players like van der Vaart and de Jong leaving for pennies, Emanuelson also. Before that we lost Davids, Kluivert and Reiziger for next to nothing, how much would those players have made us in realistic transfers? but alas they left on Bosmans.

I myself have been pining for the club to go out and spend on a striker, but in reality there is not a cost effective answer out there. Frank doesn't like El Hamdaoui because: He is not a 'team' player. In the role Frank asks of a CF he wants a selfless runner who can hold it up, link play, while keeping the rhythm and pace of the attack. Then run into the box to hopefully finish the chance. Where as El Hamdaoui want's to: drop deep, get the ball, take on 3 players, do a 1-2 with anyone and backheel chip the keeper to rapturous applause and we all know he's no Jan Molby. :P

The only option we have is to offload the unwanted players (El H included most likely) and look at bringing in another probably raw player that will need time, which us fickle football fans don't want to give. But as Ajax fans we should know that this is the way of it here.

Sorry for maybe taking this off topic.

El Hamdaoui is back. He will play next Sunday against Heracles. Let’s support him !

Gooooood time to answer and prove everything to us. Lets hope he will silence us

philippe schreef:El Hamdaoui is back. He will play next Sunday against Heracles. Let’s support him !

Minor correction, match is in two weeks because of the Euro Qualifiers this weekend. I agree that he should be supported and I hope he realizes he has been put on notice!

Yep. Correct : not next Sunday, but next game.

souras84 schreef:Gooooood time to answer and prove everything to us. Lets hope he will silence us

Third time this season for him.... good luck.

Third time's a charm...

Lets hope he does ok trouble is its all too late . We are out the Europa Cup and wont make up 6 points to get the title.

SPL schreef:wont make up 6 points to get the title.

Stranger things have happened. Here's how it plays out. PSV and Twente play to a boring 0-0 draw. We pick up 2 points on each. Feyenoord takes revenge for the 10-0 thrashing as Castignos gets a hat trick and they win 3-0. We are now 1 point behind going into the final match day. We thrash Twente as El Hamdaoui has the match of his life and PSV draw with Groningen. That presumes we can beat the other teams on our schedule which is not a given.

I've seen a lot of late season collapses in various American sports over the years and will only give up hope when we are mathematically eliminated.

I can see you are an optimist. Mind a draw between the top 2 and us beating Heracles will mean we are only 4 points off the top so I supose anything can happen.I still see us on the last day playing Twente for 2nd place but lets see. At least we will have a proper striker playing again.

SPL schreef:I can see you are an optimist. Mind a draw between the top 2 and us beating Heracles will mean we are only 4 points off the top so I supose anything can happen.I still see us on the last day playing Twente for 2nd place but lets see. At least we will have a proper striker playing again.

We have a saying that originated here in the late 1970s when our pro basketball team won the NBA championship. The were facing elimination and the coach was asked about this; his reply, "the opera's not over until the fat lady sings." We went on to win the championship and there were tee shirts printed up pretty quickly with this statement. You are right I am an optimist but also suspect you are correct.

Orange14 schreef:

philippe schreef:

bluedaddy19 schreef: the management has murdered our season

Yes ! Fuck them !

Unless the two of you are going to pony up €50M to buy some new players you better find another team to support. The money isn't there and the economics of the Dutch league are not going to make it mysteriously appear. To say this is management's fault is a gross over simplification of something that has been creeping up on this team for ten years now. It's not going to be remedied by a prayer that we are going to buy the next great striker or defender. I would urge you to back and look at the individual player postings on this forum and you can read how excited everyone was about the purchase/transfer of El Hamdaoui, Oleguer, Atouba, Wielaert, etc., etc.

For me, I would rather see the efforts bolstered around our youth program and some cooperative agreements with some Danish teams who want our system to polish their young players. We are not going to be in a position of buying players to fill gaps in our lineup (barring some rich oil money coming our way)

this has absolutely nothing to do with the issue of buying players or not

this has everything to do with mishandling a player we already have

and there can be NO doubt that frank de boer has overreached, scapegoated and had bad ideas about our attack

im not saying el hamdaoui is totally innocent and i obviously do not know all the particulars, but management had a club capable of winning the league and making a deep europa run and they botched it all the fuck up in like a week at the end of the winter window... AGAIN

botched it right the hell up with no regard to winning the title for the first time in 7 years, which i'd hope you will agree is inexcusable

who the hell are we to be throwing proper title chases out the window?

Almeida33 schreef:
I myself have been pining for the club to go out and spend on a striker, but in reality there is not a cost effective answer out there. Frank doesn't like El Hamdaoui because: He is not a 'team' player. In the role Frank asks of a CF he wants a selfless runner who can hold it up, link play, while keeping the rhythm and pace of the attack. Then run into the box to hopefully finish the chance.

well, gosh, if they wanted such a player so badly, maybe they should have gotten one in january

instead, he tried to make de jong the #9 (ugh and a half) and insisted that we had enough attackers to win the league

he was full of shit, we essentially subtracted three european cup play caliber attackers (including suarez and urby) and added no one... what has happened since should be no mystery, we have seen it before... this will be about the fifth time in the last eight years we have sold the big star just before the deadline without any replacement... this is what happens to those who do such things, they dont win anything

It was indeed much better when the "three european cup play caliber attackers" played together.

Cedric_AeF schreef:It was indeed much better when the "three european cup play caliber attackers" played together.

and under the manager who we all thought was the next coming of JC!!!! Goes to show how much everyone on this board knows.