Ajax Amsterdam, Home of Legends and Glory. [R]

Maybe we should make this our new "official" transfer policy, sell players only to teams in first place of their respective league!

 

The foul on Vertonghen was quite strange, but this was one of the better matches that I have seen Blom call all season. Each card he handed out was deserved and he didn't miss many calls. We have some serious things to fix up before next Sunday's match. Clearly the ability of Vertonghen and Alderweireld to bring the ball up from the back was curtailed and we resulted to the the old Jol days of long balls out of the back which we know are not going to work at all. We need to bring the midfielders up and have either Anita or Eriksen ready to receive a pass. We need to look for the wings a lot earlier than we did as they were open a lot during the match and again during the extra time. Ball was either not delivered at all or too late. The spacing in the midfield when de Zeeuw was on the field was terrible. Maybe this is why Eriksen could not get untracked in the middle.

Player evaluations:

Vermeer - hardly any complaints except for his kicking which is terrible. Some really good saves.
van der Wiel - horrible mistake that conceded the second goal; some decent play otherwise
Alderweireld and Vetonghen - solid games but hampered bringing the ball up by Twente's tactics
Boilesen and Blind - neither had good games defensively; both went forward but often too tentatively
Eriksen - decent but not up to his usual standard of play, probably because of the congested midfield
de Zeeuw - well taken goal but otherwise average on the day
Enoh - solid match when he came on; only one dumb play when he got carded
Anita - solid game both in the midfield and at right back but I wonder if he was the one who lost Brama on the first goal, it was difficult to tell
Ebecilio - good goal and almost had another; still gets caught in trouble if he doesn't pass soon enough
Sulejmani - played well but ran out of gas extra time
de Jong - again showed his limitations but did have a couple of snap shots that were saved
Cvitanich - very active and freed himself from defenders; received a well deserved card for the dive in the box

Bottom line - we need to tighten things up. Twente are not a great team and are quite slow in the midfield. They are also not the kind of team that can create much in open play and rely on Janssen's set kicks to generate chances (and of course this is an area that we are not terribly good at defending on) We didn't create enough space to take advantage of this and that should be job number one for this week in practice. If we are able to keep the spaces between players we can beat them since our overall quickness will prevail. Let's see what de Boer is made of in terms of coaching tactics.

 

Here is the pick me up after today - Barca lose the King's Cup to Madrid in extra time and then go on to humiliate them in the CL semifinals. Ajax will do the same!!!

 

I'm trying to think of anyone we have who has been carded for simulation other than Cvitanich yesterday and I can't think of one. We tend to play pretty clean football (other than Enoh who sticks his foot in a lot on defense and draws silly fouls).

 

Interestingly Suarez has cleaned up this aspect of his game since moving to Liverpool. I think he realizes that English officials will not give him those calls.