In JC we trust. The AJAX Amsterdam Thread [R]

"Voetballen is heel simpel, maar het moeilijkste wat er is, is simpel voetballen."

Optimistic aren't you?

About what? I have a lot of faith in Johan. Not so much in a lot of other guys that roam around the club. Seems like the RvC have it out for Johan from recent leaks.

Wait, you named this thread after yourself?

Maar met simpele mensen wordt het echt moeilijk

(But with simple people it gets really difficult)

For today.

[LINEUP-4-3-3]Boerrigter, Bulykin, Lukoki, Janssen, Enoh, De Jong, Anita, Vertonghen, Ooijer, Alderweireld, Cillessen[/LINEUP-4-3-3]

Bench: Verhoeven, Van der Wiel, Blind, Lodeiro, Eriksen, Koppers and De Sa

Halftime and we've had better midfield play in this match than in the past three or four league matches combined. Go figure. Lukoki is beating his man on the right side consistently but hasn't gotten a good cross in. He was a little selfish on one occasion and might have set up Bulykin for an easy header. We don't seem to be going down the left side much this match. Roda goal was another cheap one and thankfully Vertonhen evened things up. Anita is going forward all the time on the right side in contrast to what van der Wiel normally does. Cillessen is looking for the short pass to a midfielder or fullback in contrast to what Vermeer normally does. Almost got caught by a bad pass directly to a Roda player. We have had the better of the play and should have had another goal. de Jong is sitting in the middle as the #10 and had a couple of good passes from that position. Janssen is not really being challenged that much.

Roda is playing very chippy going after players ankles. Oojier drew a yellow card going after a Roda player who didn't quite pull up when Cillessen dove for a ball.

As usual with Ajax, this game is still up for grabs.

I'm starting to like Cilessen. I think Vermeer is going to have a difficult time winning the battle vs him in the long run.

I tuned in late but did Ajax start with 3-4-3?

Bad mistake from Cilessen there.. Their main striker unmarked for some reason.

Vormer is impressing me. I'm sure he'll prove useful for Feyenoord next year.

I don't see why Lokoki > De Sa. Seems pretty obvious that he's just fast and not anything else.

Bulykin is crap. I'd like to see Ozbiliz there.

Vertonghen and Boerrigter each with a brace in a match that should not have been close. Several squandered opportunities prevented the score line from being 6-2. Roda also looked to have done some training in Portugal with the number of dives and fake falls to draw a whistle. It did look like we were playing a 3-4-3 for large parts of the match with Anita more a mid-fielder than a fullback. I don't think that this is the type of formation to play consistently unless you really press all over the field and have good ball control. Barcelona did it several years ago when they had a lot of injuries on the back line and Chile are one of the few international teams that regularly play this way. I guess we will see what FdB does this Sunday in the rematch.

Cillessen was good at passing the ball to the open man but did take some chances that Vermeer probably would not have. I couldn't tell whether he was at fault on the second goal. Alderweireld, Oojier and Vertonghen seemed to handle the back three duties for the most part. Enoh played quite well today disrupting the Roda midfield and pass the ball well (for him this is the highest complement). Janssen and de Jong both had decent matches in the midfield. Boerrigter scored when he had the chance and could have done better with his first clean shot but it went right to the keeper. Lukoki was a constant menace down the right BUT didn't consistently deliver a good cross and was a little selfish on several occasions where he should have passed. Bulykin didn't get much service but did hold up the ball well when it came in. I think if we improve the spacing and create some better passing opportunities we can shred a team like Roda. When the wings get double teamed, the pass has to come out quicker and there should be a mismatch in the midfield.

It was good to see the team finally dominate in the midfield and score some goals. If we repeat this performance on Saturday I'll start to believe once again.

Pretty much all game except in set ball situation when Anita dropped back to make it more conventional 4-3-3. I'm not sure that we can play a 3-4-3 against decent competition since we don't press as well as is required. See my comment in the match summary.

I haven't seen De Sa much at all. Lukoki should have done much better given Roda could not stop him from turning his man. At least two goals should have come from all that good work.

Bulykin is what he is, a bull with little finesse. Still if he gets the ball he's a danger to score.

http://nos.nl/artikel/307622-breuk-cruijff-rvc-over-van-basten.html

Dirty games are being played.

The leaked letter:

http://content1b.omroep.nl/03ae6acfa6691f642fc708566446a8ce/4ea8745b/nos/docs/261011_brief.pdf

Well I didn't want to intervene in the match but NOS brought it pretty big just a hour ago looking at the main page:

http://nos.nl/

You have to realize that "chef voetbal" Arno Vermeulen absolutely despises Johan Cruijff ever since he criticized and consequently left the NOS. It's pretty clear how all information that is leaked in order to damage Johan Cruijffs reputation comes through the channel NOS first and foremost. And the only reason Arno Vermeulen nowadays participates in Studio Voetbal is to spew bile about Johan Cruijff.

Pretty funny how they quote an entire section of the interview and then leave out a single sentence for instance:

The never ending soap opera of JC's involvement with Ajax.

EDIT-JC would like this to be a dictatorship of one rather than a board of many.

All is well, they are talking again so it wasn't that serious as initially thought and JC is right about Vermeulen, he's probably the most hated pundit on SV.

On to more important news and I must say they were pretty darn good yesterday. Not only were Feyenoord knocked out of the Cup, the MOTM was 20 year old and ex-Ajax academy (damn how many are there in the Dutch leagues? ) player Antionia.

Icing on the cake was that some Dutch providers weren't showing the game on EL2, but had AT5 on instead muahahaha *evil Halloween laugh*.

Selection for Roda this weekend. No Sulejmani so guessing we'll see Ozbiliz or Ebecilio back in the starting lineup?

Kenneth Vermeer
Jasper Cillessen
Gregory van der Wiel
Toby Alderweireld
Jan Vertonghen
Vurnon Anita
Eyong Enoh
Christian Eriksen
Siem de Jong
Lorenzo Ebecilio
André Ooijer
Theo Janssen
Daley Blind
Nicolas Lodeiro
Dmitry Bulykin
Derk Boerrigter|
Aras Özbiliz
Jody Lukoki

I suspect since they are both coming back from injuries that Lukoki gets the start.

So I read we are playing the 3-4-3 again. Something like this.

Boerrigter-De Jong-Lukoki
Janssen-Enoh-Eriksen-Anita
Vertonghen-Ooijer-Alderweireld
Vermeer

Beautiful give and go between Eriksen and Janssen...

Janssen tried to use his right leg.