Ajax meet NAC Breda for the second time this week after the 4-1 Cup win on Thursday. League Leaders PSV play bottom ranked Willem II.
Ajax meet NAC Breda for the second time this week after the 4-1 Cup win on Thursday. Frank de Boer’s team were trashed 3-0 by FC Utrecht in the league last week. In their Cup win against NAC they showed signs of revival, but Ajax looked vulnerable at times.
League leaders PSV will play bottom ranked Willem II on Saturday. The tricolores managed to grab their first League win of the season when they defeated Vitesse 1-0 last week. PSV lost to FC Twente on penalties in the Cup tournament on Wednesday.
FC Twente will attack top ranked PSV again when the play Feyenoord on Sunday. The Rotterdam based club is in shambles after the 1-0 home defeat against De Graafschap last week.
“They say Heracles only grabs points at home”, NEC coach Wiljan Vloet said on Thursday. “And if you just look at the stats that may be the case”, he added. The stats don’t lie. Heracles only took one of their twenty points away from home this season.
Vloet warned for overconfidence. “They have their ups and downs, bit Heracles are a good team.” NEC does not have injury troubles and Eredivisie top scorer Björn Vleminckx is red hot with three goals from two matches after the winter break.
In Almelo Heracles beat NEC 3-2 this season and last season they defeated NEC at home and away. NEC did not win in their last five matches against Heracles.
Vitesse were the first club to lose against bottom ranked Willem II last week. The new Georgian owner Merab Jordania said that Vitesse would be a title contender within three years at the beginning of this season and he repeated those words despite the devastating 1-0 loss against Willem II.
Instead of playing for the title the current Vitesse squad will have to worry for relegation this season. Coach Albert Ferrer, who replaced Theo Bos in November does not seem to be able to unify all the newly acquired players. Against Willem II Spanish midfielders Jordi Lopez and Marti Riverola and Japanese defender Michihiro Yasuda made their debut. Ferrer took of striker Marcus Pedersen after thirty minutes and was left with virtually no strikers on the pitch.
While Vitesse did not win any of their last five league matches, Roda JC started well after the winter break. The number five ranked Limburgers defeated Excelsior 3-0 last season.
AZ were not able to win after the winter break yet. The club drew 2-2 at home against NEC and comes from a 0-0 away draw at Heracles Almelo last weekend. The match against VVV provides a good opportunity to regain confidence.
VVV lost their two matches in January and Wil Boussen, who replaced the fired head coach Jan van Dijk did not grab a point on the Venlo bench yet. Visiting Alkmaar VVV never managed to win in Eredivisie history. AZ won six of the previous Eredivisie encounters and both clubs drew twice.
In Venlo AZ defeated VVV 1-0 earlier this season. Graziano Pellè scored in the penultimate minute.
Both FC Utrecht and De Graafschap come from surprise victories last weekend. The Superboeren defeated Feyenoord 1-0 and the Domstedelingen trashed Ajax 3-0. Utrecht beat Ajax seven time before in the Eredivisie, but they never managed to win the following match.
De Graafschap are ranked twelfth with 24 points from 20 matches. The club grabbed more points from its first 20 matches only once before in Eredivisie history. In the 1996/97 season they were fifth with 33 points from the first 20 matches.
Utrecht and De Graafschap drew 2-2 in De Galgenwaard earlier this season. Jan Wuytens and Jacob Mulenga put the home team 2-0 up, but maar Hugo Bargas en Steve de Ridder saved a point for the visitors.
Top versus bottom. PSV have an easy ride in the league again after they defeated second from bottom team VVV last weekend. The league leaders suffered a great disappointment however, when they were thrown out of the Cup tournament by FC Twente on penalties on Wednesday.
Willem II only won twice in 36 previous Eredivisie visits to PSV, the last time dating back to 1983. Last weekend the tricolores won their first Eredivisie match of the current season, beating Vitesse 1-0. The last time Willem II won two league matches in a row, was in 2009. Away from home they did not manage to win in 21 consecutive matches at the moment.
This season PSV defeated Willem II 4-2 in Tilburg. Balázs Dzsudzsák, Jeremain Lens, Ibrahim Afellay and Jonathan Reis scored for the visitors. Afellay moved to FC Barcelona in the winter and Jonathan Reis is injured for the remainder of the season.
ADO Den Haag comes from a convincing 3-1 victory over sc Heerenveen last week. Excelsior on the other side restarted the competition with a 3-0 loss at Roda JC. In The Hague Excelsior gave ADO a tough challenge earlier this season, but the home team eventually won 2-1. Excelsior ended that match with nine men after Miquel Nelom and Norichio Nieveld received a red card.
Excelsior visited ADO ten times before in the Eredivisie and only won once. This victory came in the last edition of the match on 1 April 2007: 3-1. In the last two matches between both clubs in total four red cards were shown.
ADO are doing well this season, having won nine matches already they equaled the total amount of last season’s league wins already.
The northern derby between sc Heerenveen and FC Groningen is a special one this season. Groningen will meet Ron Jans, who set the longest spell in charge of Groningen in Eredivisie history as a head coach before moving to Heerenveen last summer.
With Jans on the bench Groningen won the last encounter between two clubs in Friesland 1-0. This season Groningen, where Pieter Huistra took over from Jans, won 1-0 at home against Heerenveen.
Both Groningen and Twente lost last weekend. Groningen went 2-1 down at title holders FC Twente. Heerenveen were trashed 3-1 at ADO Den Haag.
Feyenoord lost 1-0 at home against De Graafschap last week and does not seem to be a real challenge for FC Twente. The title holders threw league leaders PSV out of the Dutch Cup tournament after a penalty shootout on Wednesday.
The historic balance in Enschede is still in favor of Feyenoord, but Twente can get level with a win on Sunday. In the previous 44 encounters the home team won 12 times, the visitors 13 times and the match ended in a draw 19 times. In Rotterdam Twente won 1-0 this season thanks to a goal from Denny Landzaat, who moved from Feyenoord to Twente last summer.
Twente will count on Mark Janko again. The Austrian striker is on fire after the winter break scoring six of From Twente’s seven goals in their last two matches.
Ajax meet NAC Breda for the second time this week after the 4-1 Cup win on Thursday. On Friday the Amsterdam outfit lost top striker Luis Suarez, who was sold to Liverpool for 25 million euro’s. Earlier this week Ajax also sold Urby Emanualsson to AC Milan.
If Suarez would still have been with Ajax, he would have returned from a seven match ban against NAC. “We’ll miss him for sure”, coach Frank de Boer said after the transfer news broke. “But we still have enough quality to win matches and yes, without Suarez we will still be playing for the title.” The title chances got a serious blow when Ajax were trashed 3-0 by FC Utrecht in the league last week.
NAC will try to regroup after the Cup loss. The Breda outfit wants to extend their non-losing streak of five league matches. The last time NAC managed to stay undefeated in six consecutive matches was in January-February 2008.
League leaders PSV will play bottom ranked Willem II on Saturday. The tricolores managed to grab their first League win of the season when they defeated Vitesse 1-0 last week. PSV lost to FC Twente on penalties in the Cup tournament on Wednesday.
FC Twente will attack top ranked PSV again when the play Feyenoord on Sunday. The Rotterdam based club is in shambles after the 1-0 home defeat against De Graafschap last week.
“They say Heracles only grabs points at home”, NEC coach Wiljan Vloet said on Thursday. “And if you just look at the stats that may be the case”, he added. The stats don’t lie. Heracles only took one of their twenty points away from home this season.
Vloet warned for overconfidence. “They have their ups and downs, bit Heracles are a good team.” NEC does not have injury troubles and Eredivisie top scorer Björn Vleminckx is red hot with three goals from two matches after the winter break.
In Almelo Heracles beat NEC 3-2 this season and last season they defeated NEC at home and away. NEC did not win in their last five matches against Heracles.
Vitesse were the first club to lose against bottom ranked Willem II last week. The new Georgian owner Merab Jordania said that Vitesse would be a title contender within three years at the beginning of this season and he repeated those words despite the devastating 1-0 loss against Willem II.
Instead of playing for the title the current Vitesse squad will have to worry for relegation this season. Coach Albert Ferrer, who replaced Theo Bos in November does not seem to be able to unify all the newly acquired players. Against Willem II Spanish midfielders Jordi Lopez and Marti Riverola and Japanese defender Michihiro Yasuda made their debut. Ferrer took of striker Marcus Pedersen after thirty minutes and was left with virtually no strikers on the pitch.
While Vitesse did not win any of their last five league matches, Roda JC started well after the winter break. The number five ranked Limburgers defeated Excelsior 3-0 last season.
AZ were not able to win after the winter break yet. The club drew 2-2 at home against NEC and comes from a 0-0 away draw at Heracles Almelo last weekend. The match against VVV provides a good opportunity to regain confidence.
VVV lost their two matches in January and Wil Boussen, who replaced the fired head coach Jan van Dijk did not grab a point on the Venlo bench yet. Visiting Alkmaar VVV never managed to win in Eredivisie history. AZ won six of the previous Eredivisie encounters and both clubs drew twice.
In Venlo AZ defeated VVV 1-0 earlier this season. Graziano Pellè scored in the penultimate minute.
Both FC Utrecht and De Graafschap come from surprise victories last weekend. The Superboeren defeated Feyenoord 1-0 and the Domstedelingen trashed Ajax 3-0. Utrecht beat Ajax seven time before in the Eredivisie, but they never managed to win the following match.
De Graafschap are ranked twelfth with 24 points from 20 matches. The club grabbed more points from its first 20 matches only once before in Eredivisie history. In the 1996/97 season they were fifth with 33 points from the first 20 matches.
Utrecht and De Graafschap drew 2-2 in De Galgenwaard earlier this season. Jan Wuytens and Jacob Mulenga put the home team 2-0 up, but maar Hugo Bargas en Steve de Ridder saved a point for the visitors.
Top versus bottom. PSV have an easy ride in the league again after they defeated second from bottom team VVV last weekend. The league leaders suffered a great disappointment however, when they were thrown out of the Cup tournament by FC Twente on penalties on Wednesday.
Willem II only won twice in 36 previous Eredivisie visits to PSV, the last time dating back to 1983. Last weekend the tricolores won their first Eredivisie match of the current season, beating Vitesse 1-0. The last time Willem II won two league matches in a row, was in 2009. Away from home they did not manage to win in 21 consecutive matches at the moment.
This season PSV defeated Willem II 4-2 in Tilburg. Balázs Dzsudzsák, Jeremain Lens, Ibrahim Afellay and Jonathan Reis scored for the visitors. Afellay moved to FC Barcelona in the winter and Jonathan Reis is injured for the remainder of the season.
ADO Den Haag comes from a convincing 3-1 victory over sc Heerenveen last week. Excelsior on the other side restarted the competition with a 3-0 loss at Roda JC. In The Hague Excelsior gave ADO a tough challenge earlier this season, but the home team eventually won 2-1. Excelsior ended that match with nine men after Miquel Nelom and Norichio Nieveld received a red card.
Excelsior visited ADO ten times before in the Eredivisie and only won once. This victory came in the last edition of the match on 1 April 2007: 3-1. In the last two matches between both clubs in total four red cards were shown.
ADO are doing well this season, having won nine matches already they equaled the total amount of last season’s league wins already.
The northern derby between sc Heerenveen and FC Groningen is a special one this season. Groningen will meet Ron Jans, who set the longest spell in charge of Groningen in Eredivisie history as a head coach before moving to Heerenveen last summer.
With Jans on the bench Groningen won the last encounter between two clubs in Friesland 1-0. This season Groningen, where Pieter Huistra took over from Jans, won 1-0 at home against Heerenveen.
Both Groningen and Twente lost last weekend. Groningen went 2-1 down at title holders FC Twente. Heerenveen were trashed 3-1 at ADO Den Haag.
Feyenoord lost 1-0 at home against De Graafschap last week and does not seem to be a real challenge for FC Twente. The title holders threw league leaders PSV out of the Dutch Cup tournament after a penalty shootout on Wednesday.
The historic balance in Enschede is still in favor of Feyenoord, but Twente can get level with a win on Sunday. In the previous 44 encounters the home team won 12 times, the visitors 13 times and the match ended in a draw 19 times. In Rotterdam Twente won 1-0 this season thanks to a goal from Denny Landzaat, who moved from Feyenoord to Twente last summer.
Twente will count on Mark Janko again. The Austrian striker is on fire after the winter break scoring six of From Twente’s seven goals in their last two matches.
Ajax meet NAC Breda for the second time this week after the 4-1 Cup win on Thursday. On Friday the Amsterdam outfit lost top striker Luis Suarez, who was sold to Liverpool for 25 million euro’s. Earlier this week Ajax also sold Urby Emanualsson to AC Milan.
If Suarez would still have been with Ajax, he would have returned from a seven match ban against NAC. “We’ll miss him for sure”, coach Frank de Boer said after the transfer news broke. “But we still have enough quality to win matches and yes, without Suarez we will still be playing for the title.” The title chances got a serious blow when Ajax were trashed 3-0 by FC Utrecht in the league last week.
NAC will try to regroup after the Cup loss. The Breda outfit wants to extend their non-losing streak of five league matches. The last time NAC managed to stay undefeated in six consecutive matches was in January-February 2008.
