Hope he will loose the next two matches One as leaving coach of Utrecht and one as starting coach of Ajax
Wow so much has changed over the past few years. Trying to get caught up. Seems like always we have a good young core of players but I'm assuming half of these guys will be sold by this time next year?
So it looks like a done deal for Erik ten Hag to move from Utrecht to Ajax where he will take over for the 2nd half of the season. He is signing a 2.5 year contract and let's hope that unlike our past two trainers he sees out the full contract with success. In player news, Ajax are to sign Argentinian LB Nicolas Taglioafico from Independente. Don't know too much about him other than he played on a number of junior NTs and has one senior cap. He can't be any worse than the present LBs.
From news I got that the players were unpleasantly surprised by the sacking of Keizer. Hewas very much liked by the players and especially he got booted when things were converging has caused bad blood.
In the newspapers there's speculation that ten Hag will cost Kluivert and Neres their spot, as ten Hag favours tactics without wings.
If that is the case he will be another one and done manager. the youth system will continue to churn out traditional wingers.
The cup match against Twente when they went out on penalties. Not that long ago!!! Maybe it was a couple of years to early for him to take the helm of a club such as Ajax. The collapse of Nouri at the pre-season friendly clearly had an impact on the club (and still does) and the poor showing in both the CL and EL qualifiers did not help at all. Keizer also suffered from poor transfer policy by not getting a reliable LB at the beginning of the season and then injuries to Viergever and Sinkgraven made the back line even thinner. Keizer's late game substitution policies were also just weird. He was constantly bringing on Siem de Jong when the club needed a more defensive minded approach. Even so, Keizer got the club ready to play the two biggest rivals and succeeded.
In my book that's not a defeat. He slowly was getting things on track and as you point out some not helpfull circumstances werenot his doing.
^^The trouble is that there was a huge amount of problems with the management team that I don't think they have full solved. The fact that they made Bosz retain Spijlkerman was clearly an issue and of course he stayed on with Keizer. Bergkamp was apparently a huge problem but maybe we don't know everything about that. I do think Keizer had the right feel for the tactics and his work with Jong Ajax the season before was spectacular; that team was a joy to watch. We'll have to see what ter Hag does.
Two completely different players, but if I had to compare who's more valuable to a team I would go with Raffy