What with the new season starting on Friday it's time to share our expectations for our own team and the others. It will be an interesting one as lots of clubs are in financial trouble and NAC starts the season with a point deducted for financial reasons, so we might even want to place bets on whether all teams in the eredivisie will actually finish the season. My predictions are strongly based on the degree of financial trouble the clubs are in - normally Willem II would feature more highly e.g. 1. PSV 2. FC Twente 3. Ajax 4. AZ 5. Feyenoord 6. Heerenveen 7. Groningen 8. Utrecht 9. Heracles 10. Roda JC 11. NEC 12. Vitesse 13. VVV 14. NAC 15. ADO 16. De Graafschap 17. Willem II 18. Excelsior
OK, I'll bite on this apple as well (BTW, you picked Vitesse twice; nice try!). 1. Ajax (if Suarez and vd Wiel stay; if both go we could finish 3rd or 4th) 2. PSV 3. Twente 4. Feyenoord 5. Utrecht 6. Herenveen 7. AZ 8. Groningen 9. Heracles 10. NEC 11. Roda JC 12. Willem II 13. Vitesse 14. Ado den Haag 15. VVV 16. NAC 17. de Grafschaap 18. Excelsior
i will hand in my predictions once afellay's future is decided. have been very impressed with heerenveen and utrecht lately so can say for sure that they are my dark horses.
I'm the eternal optimist. I've picked them to win the league every year for the past five and in our weekly match contests, to win as well (I think I only picked about 2 or 3 draws last year). Will they match my predictions? Likely no, but if you can't be 100% behind your club, you should find a new one. BTW, my hometown club is dead last in our domestic top tier league. Fortunately, we don't have relegation to deal with.
That sucks! And fair enough, I was just wondering. To be honest I think Twente has a real chance of winning it again - even if we lose Ruiz. I also think that there's a clear top three now: PSV, Ajax and Twente. And I also think that the gap between that top three and the rest is pretty huge.
Yeah, we've scored 12 goals in 18 matches and don't have much of a defense either. Amazingly we are still alive in the domestic Cup competition so there's a chance that we can win something this year. If we do, we qualify for the CONCACAF CL competition (probably would set a record for the worst team to ever qualify). I was struck by how fast your team looked in the first half yesterday, much quicker than last year it appears. Luuk de Jong really looked winded in the later stages of the match and I don't think he's a full 90 minute player at this point.
I agree. But De Jong is 19 and not our first striker. Just like Carney isn't our first choice left back and Tiendalli isn't our first choice right back - and those two did great too last night. That's why I think we will finish ahead of Ajax. Our second choice players are better than Ajax's I reckon. That's what it always comes down to in longer competitions, the strength in depth. What happens when you lose key players to injury and suspensions. I agree with Amsteldam that Utrecht and Heerenveen have looked good so far but their back ups are just a massive drop in quality. That's all down to money of course.
It's probably best not to say anything else about the Amsteldam subject I guess. Anyway. Ajax again the overwhelming favourites to win the Dutch league with the bookmakers. This for the sixth year in a row hehehe.
While I agree that it won't be an easy season for NAC (what with all the drama going on), I very much doubt we will end the season as low as 16th place like Orange14 predicts. Looking forward to heading to the stadium and seeing the newly expanded stands (short sides have been expanded even closer to the pitch) this Sunday at the AZ game.. Due to the increased proximity of some of the stands to the pitch, NAC have apparently raised the per-person fine for a pitch invasion to 10,000 Euro. Someone at the NAC forum suggested a mass pitch invasion to help out - 20,000 supporters each getting fined 10,000 euro means an extra 200 million euro for our budget Anyway my predictions for the season: 1. Ajax 2. FC Twente 3. PSV 4. AZ 5. Feyenoord 6. Utrecht 7. Groningen 8. Heerenveen 9. Heracles 10. Roda JC 11. NAC 12. Vitesse 13. NEC 14. ADO 15. VVV 16. De Graafschap 17. Willem II 18. Excelsior
HA! Seriously I hope you sort yourselves out. I'm no big NAC fan (I hate your manager in fact) but it's a proper club with great support, unlike some other clubs in the eredivisie that I won't name. Can you post pics of the stadium expansion?
1 AJAX 2 PSV 3 Twente 4 AZ 5 Feyenoord 6 Utrecht 7 Heerenveen 8 Groningen 9 Roda JC 10 Heracles 11 NEC 12 NAC 13 Vitesse 14 VVV 15 Willem II 16 ADO 17 De Graafschap 18 Excelsior If I were to bet money on who to win the league it would be on Twente. I think PSV, Twente and Ajax are pretty even in terms of quality. But since nobody likes Twente enough to bet on them the odds are way better.
This is the only picture I could find of one of the short stands after the building was as good as completed: http://www.nac.nl/nieuws/33327/stadion-volgens-planning-opgeleverd.html They bridged over the gutter that used to separate the stand from the pitch (and made the slope less steep for the first eight rows), which means that we get four rows extra for both of the short stands (total maybe 2.500 seats extra). So now at 20,000 - I wish they could do the same for the long stands now to get to around 24,000! On Sunday I will be on row 1 of one of the long stands, so there'll still be a gutter between my stand and the pitch. However, it's still close enough for me to be caught on TV with my head in my hands again (like what happened to me during NAC 1-3 Villarreal in the UEFA Europa League last season ). As for Robert Maaskant, I will always be thankful to him for guiding us to six 2009/10 European matches, despite us only finishing 8th the season before. Ernie Brandts may have got us to an amazing 3rd place in 2007/08, but after three disastrous playoff ties we only got two Intertoto Cup matches against Rosenborg out of it. And hosting random European teams at our stadium is always something special since it only happens sporadically!
Does NAC really draw 20.000 people? That's impressive. Anyone got eredivisie attendance numbers for last season?
Well we only just finished the upgrade to 20.000 seats (actually I heard a figure of 19.999 seats often quoted, if it's true then how frustrating that they couldn't fit in just one more seat somewhere ). Last season our stadium had a capacity of 17.750 seats and according to Soccernet we averaged 17.535 attendance. So yes the vast majority of games were sold out, and it really was high time for them to expand the stadium. I hope they continue to expand because I suspect that 20.000 seats will also regularly sell out...
It's a good sign that attendance numbers are going up, I think it's been around +4% each season for the past couple of years. With De Graafschap back this season will probably break another attendance record.
Looks like you will be right on top of the action. It's like Chelsea's home ground where the stands are only about 4 m from the pitch edge. Hope they are filled all season long!!!
VI's new season guide out today (and full of dreadful mistakes but never mind). They always ask the managers for their predictions, not surprisingly most think it'll be between Ajax and PSV. Interesting from a Twente perspective is that the managers of the traditional top three do think Twente will compete for the top positions.
I did not see the Feyenoord game but I saw the other 4 contenders this weekend--complete games --and PSV looked best against a pretty good Heerenveen team so they are my pick at this moment