Several Ajax players are irritated on Sunday evening in front of the camera of ESPN appeared. Ajax played a goalless draw at home against Go Ahead Eagles (0-0), and that led to a lot of frustration with trainer Erik ten Hag, Davy Klaassen, Dusan Tadic and Daley Blind. The latter calls the result and the course of the match ‘scandalous’.
Ten Hag sees a pattern emerging in his team, which left the field with the same final score against Heracles Almelo last weekend. The game round before that, the team from Amsterdam lost 0-1 against FC Utrecht. “We must be hungry. We have a lot of ball possession, but in the end it’s about what you do with the ball. We need to invest more to get into the box and be hungry to score the goal. That was lacking today. That is a repetitive story, so we have to do something with it. The anger will remain in my stomach for the next few days,” concludes the trainer.
Blind also believes that the sharpness for the enemy goal needs to be worked on. The defender also sees similarities with the previous duels in which points were lost, and reporter Toine van Peperstraten speaks visibly irritated. “Parallels with previous duels? Well, just that it’s not good enough. It’s just outrageous that we don’t win. If you want to be a champion, you have to beat the little ones. But we don’t. We should have invested more in runs in the first half. This is how you pull the opponent’s defense apart. But in the second half we also had enough opportunities, and they just have to go in.”
Although Klaassen saw that Ajax was not accurate in the completion, the midfielder also complained about the game concept of Go Ahead. “At some point you get to sixteen and then eleven players are waiting for you. Anyway, you need to get behind that defense. And the ball has to get there at the right time; the alignment just has to be right. I had the feeling that we continued to get opportunities and you could see that, but there was also a bit of bad luck,” said Klaassen.
“We try to put every player on edge,” Tadic explains at the press conference afterwards. “We’ve had 20 shots on target, and we’ve had chances. But with our qualities we have to bring more. We should not be playing 0-0. Sometimes you also have to be a bit lucky, but we have to do more with our qualities. Sometimes you have to shift the game to the other side. Then you have more space. Then it is easier for us and harder for the opponent.”