Entry of:04-01-00
Happy New Year!
Let's hope it becomes more glorious than 1999 was for Ajax. After a disappointing season Ajax bought some good players to start this season. Laudrup,Machlas,Winter, van Halst and Verlaat were important players that joined Ajax. Reason enough to think this season was going to be succesful. Ajax opened this season strong with a 3-2 win over Heerenveen, coming back after Heerenveen scored. Also the 2-6 in Maastricht against MVV and the 0-3 against Cambuur in Leeuwarden proved that Ajax could easily win in awaymatches. The 2-2 against Feyenoord at home was dissapointing cause Ajax deserved the win in that game. Fortunately Dukla Banska from Slowakia was Ajax first opponent and Ajax could boost moral winning over this poor playing amateur team. Ajax beat the Slowakians 6-1 at home and a 1-3 win in the awaymatch 2 weeks later. Ajax eased in to the second round UEFA cup. Then the first sensitive little strike was given to Ajax. In Waalwijk Ajax lost points against RKC, the team that surprised all big opponents this year. The 1-1 was one point more than Ajax deserved and it really was a sunday with a black teint. But Ajax came back in a very strong period, and kept the 2 points gap to the strong playing PSV-squad at 2 points with glamourous wins over Vitesse (3-1) and Fortuna S
(4-1) at home and in the away matches Willem II(3-6; a fantastic display) and NEC (1-3) were whiped away, only NEC gave Ajax a little struggle.
UEFA's second round was allready there in the third week of October and Hapoel Haifa(Isr) was the opponent and it was great to see that Ajax had so many Jewish fans in Israel. It was almost a shame to knock such a sympathetic team out of the Cup but Ajax did it anyways. The awaymatch showed a standard playing Ajaxsquad and a formal 0-3 win, but the homematch came at a terrible period and Ajax lost 0-1 at home in Amsterdam, still Ajax went through to the third round. But the draw of Real Mallorca as a next opponent made Ajax worried and that was logical, Spanish play is better than the current Ajax form. The league continued with a 6-1 win from Ajax at home over midget Den Bosch but then Roda JC punched out the lights in Amsterdam stealing away 3 points after a 1-2 win. PSV also started to stumble a little and both teams were loosing their big gap to the rest of the teams. Ajax however won 2 times with bad play, once in Rotterdam against Sparta where Ajax filled the 90 minutes with 10 men and a very luck 1-2 lead. Ajax took the 3 points and had its hands full with FC Utrecht a week later at home, but won with 2-0 anyways. Mallorca was waiting and it was almost embarassing to witness the play that Ajax showed in the home match against the Spanjards and the 0-1 was too little for the huge difference in power between the 2 teams. That Ajax could not turn that score around in Mallorca was clear to me at that time and that came true 2 weeks later when Mallorca left Ajax without a chance on the sunny island, 2-0.
Ajax could now fully focus on the national games, and so could all teams but Feyenoord which showed more and more the catastrophic situation of Dutch soccer, with only 1 team surviving the winter in the Europa cup. Ajax failed however in finding back the form they needed. After a 1-2 lucky win in Alkmaar over AZ Ajax took the lead but could not maintain it and had to cash another 2 losses. For the second time Ajax got in trouble with RKC, this time at home, 1-2 and RKC played well, Ajax made the real fans silent. PSV observed glundering and even though Ajax got an extra week of rest after the 3rd round UEFA Cup knockout, because the major of Enschede forbid the game FC Twente-Ajax, it did not help.Topscorer v.Nistelrooy had his revival during the game in Amsterdam and Ajax lost without a chance giving Nistelrooy plenty of space. PSV took a big lead but lost in the game against Heerenveen 3 points at home. Heerenveen the surprise of the first competitionhalf took the second place away from Ajax who got a humble draw in Doetinchem against Graafschap with a beauty of a goal from Machlas to show that he can not be written off just yet.
Ajax had a stroak where it showed pure Ajaxworthy galleryplay. But the little cardhouse collapsed when the first "cards"got injured. The subs simply have to much trouble cooping with the huge responsibilities and only Chivu shows stamina in a very weak defense. Wouter survived the winterstop obviously and that is remarkable after the chaos Ajax showed during the last few weeks. Let's hope for his sake that things get better soon after the winterstop so we can still avoid the topic of another lost season. The game for the cup away against Roda JC on January 30st seems a very good test. Tomorrow we will look at the expectations for the next seasonhalf.
GAMES YET TO COME:(expected points)
Away: Fortuna S(3),PSV(1),Den Bosch(3),Heerenveen(0),Roda JC(1), Feyenoord(3),Vitesse(1),FC Utrecht(3) and one game to catch up against FC Twente(0)
Home:Cambuur L(3),Willem II(3),de Graafschap(3),FC Twente(1),NEC(3),Sparta(3),AZ(3),MVV(3)
GOOD PLAYERS FIRST SEASONHALF:
Knopper,Laudrup,Gronkjaer,Winter,Witschge
BAD PLAYERS FIRST SEASONHALF:
Nieuwenburg,Grim,Machlas,Hose
HOT TIPS FOR THE SECOND HALF:
Knopper,Laudrup,Gronkjaer,Winter,Witschge,de Cler,Machlas,Chivu,O'Brien,Dani,Ricksen(?)
WHERE ARE THEY????
Tobiassen,Vierklau,Babangida,Arveladze,Dani,O'Brien
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