Champions League Semi Finals (30th April - 8th May)

SqueakyWeasel

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Yep, this if the original sentence:

Vijf minuten voor tijd had niemand op de tribune het meer, toen Jan Vertonghen op de lat kopte en de rebound...
"Five minutes before the end, nobody in the stands had the lake, when Jan Vertonghen headed on the crossbar and the Belgian rebound was removed by Veltman from the goal mouth. Ten seconds later Son threatened again on the left, but the South Korean saw his seething shot over the goal of Onana disappear through the bar. With Lisandro Magallan for Van de Beek, Ten Hag took his last step and Ajax seemed to pull it over, but it was not to be."

They are translating "Meer" as the noun for lake when it means "more" in this case I think! As in "no-one in the stands had any more to give."
 

Vidyoyo

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Had niemand op de tribune het meer:

People in the stands couldn’t cope anymore.

Meer = more (or lake :))
"Five minutes before the end, nobody in the stands had the lake, when Jan Vertonghen headed on the crossbar and the Belgian rebound was removed by Veltman from the goal mouth. Ten seconds later Son threatened again on the left, but the South Korean saw his seething shot over the goal of Onana disappear through the bar. With Lisandro Magallan for Van de Beek, Ten Hag took his last step and Ajax seemed to pull it over, but it was not to be."

They are translating "Meer" as the noun for lake when it means "more" in this case I think! As in "no-one in the stands had any more to give."
Thank you. It wasn't important but you've satisfied my curiosity :)
 

SqueakyWeasel

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I meant as in how me praising Pochettino somehow got turned in to some generalization about Liverpool fans:lol:

And Spurs, but mostly because I like Poch and their project. If it was you v City, I’d cheer on you.
I like Poch too … sorry, I think I might cheer for them … but in about a decade, when we get our act together, you're still welcome to cheer us on. I'd kinda like that! ;)
 

diarm

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@diarm

It appears the fish finger is evolving.
You'll have to explain that evolution to me. Has this victory turned Spurs into an historic European heavyweight?

Regardless, as I said earlier - fair play to them for staging a comeback I didn't think they had in them.

I'll be screaming from the rooftops for ye in the final pal!
 

RussellWilson

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Jose is absolutely right here. Why didn't Ajax put someone in front of Llorente instead of giving Spurs easily balls into him whole he physically dominated Blind. Simple stuff.
 

mvdk

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Almost... We have to wait years again, because 'the money' will buy all our players. Maybe Ajax has to transfer to the Premier League. Now we have 10 millions per year because of the weak eredivisie... So we just can't hold our players.

Next summer we have to start in CL qualification again, even if we win the league.
 
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vadimivich

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Jose is absolutely right here. Why didn't Ajax put someone in front of Llorente instead of giving Spurs easily balls into him whole he physically dominated Blind. Simple stuff.
In the first leg De Ligt had Llorente the entire match and controlled him in the air. This time he was forced to track and mark Son (and Alli was pushed up higher) and that allowed Llorente to hunt out Blind who obviously was manhandled.
 

United Hobbit

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Shall be firmly cheering on Spurs in the final, would have liked tonight's game to have been the final so I could fully enjoy it as a neutral

Even if Kane is fit surely he wont start would Tottenham fans say you're actually better without him? At least you've got that boost that hes on the bench and can come on if needed, don't you also risk him being rusty theres no game you can give him a run out in is there before the final? As guessing he's not ready for the weekend.

Unfortunately I think Liverpool are winning, they have the experience of the atmosphere etc from last season, Tottenham haven't done well in finals they've been in lately.

It does make the situation we are in all the more depressing as neither are packed with world class players in the same way City are yes obviously they have some in each side but we could say the same but there are also average players but because all the players work hard and are well set up they can go and do this :(

Does anyone read into the potential rumours Pochettino will walk away if you win this? Who would he walk away for?
 

Cait Sith

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Never going to happen. It's one thing to be complacent and switch off against Roma and another to repeat it against a much better team 1 year later when the wounds are still fresh from that freak result.
Ok, it IS possible after all. :nervous:
 

SquishyMcSquish

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You'll have to explain that evolution to me. Has this victory turned Spurs into an historic European heavyweight?

Regardless, as I said earlier - fair play to them for staging a comeback I didn't think they had in them.

I'll be screaming from the rooftops for ye in the final pal!

This match for me summed up what I was trying to get at during our discussions. All that pedigree that Ajax have as a club couldn't stop them (Or Barcelona) from panicking and losing in incredible fashion. Both clubs are trophy laden, European giants but at the end of the day the players who won those trophies aren't on the pitch. History wise Ajax shit all over us from a great height, but it can't really help them when its 11 vs 11 and they're nervy because we've got one back.

Not that I can claim to have expected tonight either. Fecking ridiculous, stupendous, unreal .. all that shit. I'm still absolutely buzzing. At half time I was fuming and the performance was a disgrace, but we were a totally different team second half and you can see how proud Pochettino is.

Two managers in Klopp and Poch who are incredible coaches and you can see the kind of atmosphere they foster post-game. Both passionate dudes who seriously care about what they're doing at these football clubs.
 

Che Guevara

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Shall be firmly cheering on Spurs in the final, would have liked tonight's game to have been the final so I could fully enjoy it as a neutral

Even if Kane is fit surely he wont start would Tottenham fans say you're actually better without him? At least you've got that boost that hes on the bench and can come on if needed, don't you also risk him being rusty theres no game you can give him a run out in is there before the final? As guessing he's not ready for the weekend.
Shall be firmly cheering on Spurs in the final, would have liked tonight's game to have been the final so I could fully enjoy it as a neutral

Even if Kane is fit surely he wont start would Tottenham fans say you're actually better without him? At least you've got that boost that hes on the bench and can come on if needed, don't you also risk him being rusty theres no game you can give him a run out in is there before the final? As guessing he's not ready for the weekend.

Unfortunately I think Liverpool are winning, they have the experience of the atmosphere etc from last season, Tottenham haven't done well in finals they've been in lately.

It does make the situation we are in all the more depressing as neither are packed with world class players in the same way City are yes obviously they have some in each side but we could say the same but there are also average players but because all the players work hard and are well set up they can go and do this :(

Does anyone read into the potential rumours Pochettino will walk away if you win this? Who would he walk away for?

Unfortunately I think Liverpool are winning, they have the experience of the atmosphere etc from last season, Tottenham haven't done well in finals they've been in lately.

It does make the situation we are in all the more depressing as neither are packed with world class players in the same way City are yes obviously they have some in each side but we could say the same but there are also average players but because all the players work hard and are well set up they can go and do this :(

Does anyone read into the potential rumours Pochettino will walk away if you win this? Who would he walk away for?
Not a Spurs fan, but don't believe that rumour mate. Pochettino's current Spurs contract runs up to 2023. If Spurs win the CL there is no way they will let him go, and with 4 years to go he won't be cheap. He will be such a hero at Spurs even he won't want to go, because finally Spurs are a big club. Why would he leave when he has made Spurs the best in Europe? We all know what happened to managers who thought they were good enough to join bigger clubs. The grass is not always greener on the other side.
 

diarm

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This match for me summed up what I was trying to get at during our discussions. All that pedigree that Ajax have as a club couldn't stop them (Or Barcelona) from panicking and losing in incredible fashion. Both clubs are trophy laden, European giants but at the end of the day the players who won those trophies aren't on the pitch. History wise Ajax shit all over us from a great height, but it can't really help them when its 11 vs 11 and they're nervy because we've got one back.

Not that I can claim to have expected tonight either. Fecking ridiculous, stupendous, unreal .. all that shit. I'm still absolutely buzzing. At half time I was fuming and the performance was a disgrace, but we were a totally different team second half and you can see how proud Pochettino is.

Two managers in Klopp and Poch who are incredible coaches and you can see the kind of atmosphere they foster post-game. Both passionate dudes who seriously care about what they're doing at these football clubs.
That's fair enough and you've had your argument backed up. I genuinely felt Ajax were a better side than Spurs this year and the better team over the two legs but a second half switchoff and a Moura masterclass showed that as always, anything can happen in football.

I'm happy to concede that the first part of my argument - that the history and culture of a great club like Ajax will make the difference against a smaller club like Spurs when all else is equal, has been proven wrong tonight. I thought Ajax looked more talented but Spurs more experienced and clinical at the crucial time.

The second part though - the fish finger argument about Spurs fans being too big for their boots and having small dog syndrome about your delusions of grandeur is infallible. It'll take several more nights like tonight or a major personality realignment for your support base to change my mind on that.

Congrats anyway. Hopefully this can be the start of something new for both of us - where I treat sides without history with more respect and where you don't react with utter contempt to the suggestion that a team from a lesser league might be as talented as your own.
 

SquishyMcSquish

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That's fair enough and you've had your argument backed up. I genuinely felt Ajax were a better side than Spurs this year and the better team over the two legs but a second half switchoff and a Moura masterclass showed that as always, anything can happen in football.

I'm happy to concede that the first part of my argument - that the history and culture of a great club like Ajax will make the difference against a smaller club like Spurs when all else is equal, has been proven wrong tonight. I thought Ajax looked more talented but Spurs more experienced and clinical at the crucial time.

The second part though - the fish finger argument about Spurs fans being too big for their boots and having small dog syndrome about your delusions of grandeur is infallible. It'll take several more nights like tonight or a major personality realignment for your support base to change my mind on that.

Congrats anyway. Hopefully this can be the start of something new for both of us - where I treat sides without history with more respect and where you don't react with utter contempt to the suggestion that a team from a lesser league might be as talented as your own.

Oh absolutely, I don't think many of our fans think we're really big time just because of this, we're just enjoying the ride. My little fish finger jibe was more a joke than anything else, clearly just getting to a final doesn't mean you've made it and we have a hell of a lot to prove.

Ajax proved me wrong, I've got no issue with admitting that. They played fantastic, fearless football over both games and that team has so much talent. It's actually a serious shame and a poor reflection on modern football that the squad is going to be picked to the bones by clubs from the bigger leagues, because Ajax as a club deserve the chance to retain and build on that core. Those youngsters (De Jong and De Ligt in particular) could be the world class core of an Ajax side that win multiple titles in the next decade or so but alas, football isn't like that.
 

starman

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Does anyone have a clip of the winning goal from the BT feed, when it just suddenly cut to random people?

I imagine the BT director must have been going mental smashing all the buttons :lol:
 

diarm

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Oh absolutely, I don't think many of our fans think we're really big time just because of this, we're just enjoying the ride. My little fish finger jibe was more a joke than anything else, clearly just getting to a final doesn't mean you've made it and we have a hell of a lot to prove.

Ajax proved me wrong, I've got no issue with admitting that. They played fantastic, fearless football over both games and that team has so much talent. It's actually a serious shame and a poor reflection on modern football that the squad is going to be picked to the bones by clubs from the bigger leagues, because Ajax as a club deserve the chance to retain and build on that core. Those youngsters (De Jong and De Ligt in particular) could be the world class core of an Ajax side that win multiple titles in the next decade or so but alas, football isn't like that.
Totally agree with that. Barca did the exact same thing to the last great Ajax side of the early 90's and it's a great shame. I must say I'm getting a bit giddy about what this Dutch team might become - as an Irishman born in Rotterdam, I support Holland at any major tournament Ireland don't qualify for (which is most) and I'm not sure there is a side on the planet more overdue a World Cup win.
 

tentan

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Well done to Spurs. I can't believe it! Fantastic scenes tonight.
 
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hahahahaha oh man and I got accused of sounding bitter after the first leg!
Sorry, what? I took issue with the statement of “best English football has to offer”. That’s objectively verifiable it wasn’t and given how few English players played this week, I have a hard time proclaiming it even English. How many current or future English national team members played this week of the 3 English players in your team? :/

You got completely outplayed in that second half, and in the second half of the first leg you were outplayed as well.
Yeah, yet just equal if not more chances for us and a ball on the post in each second leg with the difference that your team capitalised on a mistake at the 2-2 and got lucky in the last seconds while throwing everyone to the front in a last ditch attempt.

What your team did, while effective in the end, wasn’t great to watch, it wasn’t organised and it wasn’t that great over two legs. You lucked out while Ajax was sadly highly inefficient with the busload of chances created and saying otherwise would be arrogant.

It was an even tie, we had serious injury issues which have held us back but still, here we are.
And that’s certainly a great achievement, which I’m not questioning at all, even congratulated you, but it’s not “the best English football can provide”. :/

On the other hand, if you’re saying the EPL is nearly on par with the Eredivisie quality wise... ;)

If you can't handle the long balls to Llorente, why not? It's Ajax's fault if you can't deal with football that way, football purists are so silly.
Wasn’t it me who said Sissoko and Llorente were actually the best thing you had going last match exactly because he handled the long balls well and gave you possession near Ajax’ box and Sissoko’s physical play helped in the midfield battle? Hmm... yes, yes it was. Maybe I already gave your team credit for that strategy last time, without actually having to dub this the best football ever from English teams? Ajax performed admirably, but they should have finished it off with both more goals and more effective stalling. Ajax made mistakes and you took advantage of it. Let’s be realistic here, without Ajax’ inefficiency with chances created, the “best the EPL has to offer”, would have been a 5-3 or 6-3 loss and a 0-2 or 1-3 match in your home leg. But it’s definitely full credit to Tottenham that they didn’t give up at 2-0 (3-0 agg) and worked hard to overcome the odds.

The best the EPL can do is an all English final after both teams staged incredible comebacks, and probably an all English Europa League final too. By far the strongest league in world football now.
Given Ajax got an equal amount of good chances as Tottenham including hitting the post and several shots on goal and that went barely wide in the second half and Tottenham getting lucky on the 2-2 by an error, I can’t say I agree with your analysis at all. You are trying to turn a narrow, but well and hard fought win on aggregate draw into an exceptional pwnage performance when you say the “best English football has to offer”, which it wasn’t. However, it was a tremendous feat against all odds, which is an achievement in a different category: some of the more unlikely turn-arounds in high stakes games. I bare no ill will towards Tottenham for achieving it, even though it was as you can imagine a huge anti-climax having been on the winning hand for approximately 168 minutes and some added time. ;)



That said, hope Tottenham wins it. It’s a third of an Ajax team afterall. Couldn’t have done it without some of the best the Eredivisie had to offer seven years ago. ;)
 
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"Five minutes before the end, nobody in the stands had the lake, when Jan Vertonghen headed on the crossbar and the Belgian rebound was removed by Veltman from the goal mouth. Ten seconds later Son threatened again on the left, but the South Korean saw his seething shot over the goal of Onana disappear through the bar. With Lisandro Magallan for Van de Beek, Ten Hag took his last step and Ajax seemed to pull it over, but it was not to be."

They are translating "Meer" as the noun for lake when it means "more" in this case I think! As in "no-one in the stands had any more to give."
It roughly translates to: “Nobody in the stands had it anymore”

Pretty much: “they all lost it”.
 

africanspur

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Congrats by the way @SquishyMcSquish @InLevyITrust @balaks @africanspur @GlastonSpur. I thought you deserved it after tonight at least as much as Ajax did, both games were a tale of two halves imo.

Will be a hard fought, high intensity game in Madrid. Can’t wait!
Thanks mate. Genuinely can't believe we've made it, incredible. I think we did deserve it in the end. Ajax are an incredible team and they play better football than us, certainly with the broken down state we're in at the moment. But football is not all about pretty passing and they couldn't deal with the increased physical approach at all. Their pretty passing almost went out of the window, bar 2 or 3 times, in the second half.

Saw an Xg for the game and the tie and Spurs were actually well out ahead over the 180 minutes.

What an incredible achievement for this Ajax team though and if they'd gotten through, I would have been fully behind them. A squad who pays their players less than Burnley winning the CL, would have brought some of the magic back into the CL for me.

Hopefully we just have to reintroduce some of that magic. :D
 

GNRfan

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This is a Spurs team that have lost 13 games in the league. Remarkable.
 

KirkDuyt

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Something that sort of bothered me from the last two matches.

Liverpool - Barcelona, about 35 minutes were wasted in the second half. Rolling, diving and crying on both sides of the pitch. 5 minutes of injury time, of which Pool wasted about 1.5 - 2 minutes. The ref blows for the end at 4:55.

Ajax - Spurs, no injuries, hardly any stoppage incidents, a rather clean match all together. The same 5 minutes of injury time, but this time, Onana waste's about 25 seconds, get's a yellow and the ref decides to add another full minute.

I don't want to sound like a bad loser, but it's a bit random innit?
 

Josh 76

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This is a Spurs team that have lost 13 games in the league. Remarkable.
Up until March they were 3 points behind you. It's just that's they havent spent 200m like liverpool and didnt have the squad.
 

africanspur

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@FigmentOfYerImagination

I think some of those criticisms are a little unfair.

Ajax had 6 Dutch players on the pitch yesterday, we had 3 because 2 of our best players and certain starters (Winks and Kane) are both injured. When Squishy talks about English football, I think he is talking more about the style of play of the league, which has always featured non English players, rather than just English players.

And to answer your question: Rose, Trippier and Dele are all big parts of the squad, as are Dier (bench), Kane (injured) and Winks was getting into the squad more and more (injured).

I think the only time we were 'lucky' was that Ajax didn't score more in that period of utter domination of 30 minutes in the 1st half of the 1st leg. But lucky about the communication mix up? That's not luck, its just bad defending. I wouldn't say it was lucky for instance that Trippier just stood still for your first goal or that he'd decided he couldn't be bothered to run back for the second goal (or that he seems on a one man mission to be at fault for the most goals in a CL campaign ever). We also had big chances and hit the post/bar twice off the top of my head yesterday.

Having said all the above, as I've said multiple times on here, Ajax are an incredible team and I feel almost sorry for you guys (as sorry as you can feel for someone when you team has just reached the CL final). Your team played an incredible campaign and play some beautiful football. If Tottenham weren't in the CL, I would have been rooting for your team throughout. I'm sure it won't happen unfortunately in modern football but I hope De Jong is the only casualty of this team this summer.

Good luck for the rest of the season.

 

GNRfan

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Up until March they were 3 points behind you. It's just that's they havent spent 200m like liverpool and didnt have the squad.
13 losses! They are not that bad, even with the injuries. They didn't take their chances in front of goal.
Only City have THE squad. They can replace like-for-like with little drop-off in quality. We are getting there. Couple of more signings.
 

africanspur

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Something that sort of bothered me from the last two matches.

Liverpool - Barcelona, about 35 minutes were wasted in the second half. Rolling, diving and crying on both sides of the pitch. 5 minutes of injury time, of which Pool wasted about 1.5 - 2 minutes. The ref blows for the end at 4:55.

Ajax - Spurs, no injuries, hardly any stoppage incidents, a rather clean match all together. The same 5 minutes of injury time, but this time, Onana waste's about 25 seconds, get's a yellow and the ref decides to add another full minute.

I don't want to sound like a bad loser, but it's a bit random innit?
Yeah the timings are a bit strange. I've always been a bit pissed off with time wasting, though I can understand it. Onana wastes time, gets yellow carded, then proceeds to waste a lot more time because he knows that he will never get a second yellow for time wasting.

The ball rolls in to the net at pretty much exactly 5:00 (I think it might have been 5:01). I know we celebrated but that should have been literally the last kick of the match? Where did an extra 2 and a half minutes come from?

I saw Eriksen at City again I have to say when Lamela decided to dribble his way out of our corner. Why oh why?
 

KirkDuyt

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Yeah the timings are a bit strange. I've always been a bit pissed off with time wasting, though I can understand it. Onana wastes time, gets yellow carded, then proceeds to waste a lot more time because he knows that he will never get a second yellow for time wasting.

The ball rolls in to the net at pretty much exactly 5:00 (I think it might have been 5:01). I know we celebrated but that should have been literally the last kick of the match? Where did an extra 2 and a half minutes come from?

I saw Eriksen at City again I have to say when Lamela decided to dribble his way out of our corner. Why oh why?
I do think that the way the ref handled it yesterday is better. Time wasting should be detrimental. It's just sad that yesterday it finally was :)
 

SquishyMcSquish

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Sorry, what? I took issue with the statement of “best English football has to offer”. That’s objectively verifiable it wasn’t and given how few English players played this week, I have a hard time proclaiming it even English. How many current or future English national team members played this week of the 3 English players in your team? :/



Yeah, yet just equal if not more chances for us and a ball on the post in each second leg with the difference that your team capitalised on a mistake at the 2-2 and got lucky in the last seconds while throwing everyone to the front in a last ditch attempt.

What your team did, while effective in the end, wasn’t great to watch, it wasn’t organised and it wasn’t that great over two legs. You lucked out while Ajax was sadly highly inefficient with the busload of chances created and saying otherwise would be arrogant.



And that’s certainly a great achievement, which I’m not questioning at all, even congratulated you, but it’s not “the best English football can provide”. :/

On the other hand, if you’re saying the EPL is nearly on par with the Eredivisie quality wise... ;)



Wasn’t it me who said Sissoko and Llorente were actually the best thing you had going last match exactly because he handled the long balls well and gave you possession near Ajax’ box and Sissoko’s physical play helped in the midfield battle? Hmm... yes, yes it was. Maybe I already gave your team credit for that strategy last time, without actually having to dub this the best football ever from English teams? Ajax performed admirably, but they should have finished it off with both more goals and more effective stalling. Ajax made mistakes and you took advantage of it. Let’s be realistic here, without Ajax’ inefficiency with chances created, the “best the EPL has to offer”, would have been a 5-3 or 6-3 loss and a 0-2 or 1-3 match in your home leg. But it’s definitely full credit to Tottenham that they didn’t give up at 2-0 (3-0 agg) and worked hard to overcome the odds.



Given Ajax got an equal amount of good chances as Tottenham including hitting the post and several shots on goal and that went barely wide in the second half and Tottenham getting lucky on the 2-2 by an error, I can’t say I agree with your analysis at all. You are trying to turn a narrow, but well and hard fought win on aggregate draw into an exceptional pwnage performance when you say the “best English football has to offer”, which it wasn’t. However, it was a tremendous feat against all odds, which is an achievement in a different category: some of the more unlikely turn-arounds in high stakes games. I bare no ill will towards Tottenham for achieving it, even though it was as you can imagine a huge anti-climax having been on the winning hand for approximately 168 minutes and some added time. ;)



That said, hope Tottenham wins it. It’s a third of an Ajax team afterall. Couldn’t have done it without some of the best the Eredivisie had to offer seven years ago. ;)
So what? It's still English football. We have plenty of English players in the squad (a couple more in Winks and Kane who were injured so could not feature today sadly) and it doesn't stop being English just because we have a lot of foreign players in our side. That sounds like absolutely bitter nonsense, it's the best English LEAGUE football has to offer. The national side is a totally separate entity.

Second leg we had more shots, more shots on target and more possession. You hit the post, we hit the bar, missed a one on one with the keeper (Son) and had a number of close range shots in the box wasted. You did create chances too, but we created more and were by far the better side in the second half. Football isn't about who played the best for the longest period, it's about who capitalises on their good spells and gets the results .. which is what we did. You're acting like it was a total smash and grab when I'd say we had the better of 2/4 of the halves in the tie.

We had some luck, which is what you always need to advance to a final. Ajax didn't create a 'busload' of chances in that second leg, not more than we did. We wasted just as many. We were also fantastic to watch in that second half, came forward in wave after wave and peppered your goal. Your players couldn't even get out of their own half for large periods.

We're FOURTH in the English league, we're clearly not the best it has to offer. We're 25 points behind top domestically and beat #1 and #2 in the Eredivisie.

Nobody said it was the best football ever from English teams. It's the best England has to offer in the sense that we've managed to get two teams in the final, which is an incredible achievement for a league. Obviously City play far superior football to us, you seem to have misunderstood what that actually means. And yeah ok, a 6-3 loss if every Ajax half chance goes in whereas we still miss all our half chances, ok buddy :lol:.

I get why you're pissed off/frustrated. Your team were brilliant over two legs and in control, they shat themselves in that second half. On the balance of play overall you should have gone through but it wasn't as one sided as you're making out and we had our periods in both games. The problem was in the first leg that we simply didn't have the attacking talent on the pitch to capitalise on our period of dominance so it was easy to defend against us. We had serious injury problems for this tie with our best player and talisman missing both games and Son missing the first leg.

When did I try and turn it in to a 'pwnage performance' :confused: ?? We played badly for half the tie. We turned up when it mattered though, scored 3 goals. I've never claimed we destroyed Ajax or any of that nonsense, I think it was a pretty balanced tie in which both teams had their periods in the game. It seems to be just Ajax fans making out you absolutely destroyed us but somehow we've got through purely by fortune/grit, when whilst you did play the prettier football you can't call it a smash and grab when we have 24 shots and more of the ball.
 

SquishyMcSquish

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Yeah the timings are a bit strange. I've always been a bit pissed off with time wasting, though I can understand it. Onana wastes time, gets yellow carded, then proceeds to waste a lot more time because he knows that he will never get a second yellow for time wasting.

The ball rolls in to the net at pretty much exactly 5:00 (I think it might have been 5:01). I know we celebrated but that should have been literally the last kick of the match? Where did an extra 2 and a half minutes come from?

I saw Eriksen at City again I have to say when Lamela decided to dribble his way out of our corner. Why oh why?
Actually screamed at my television during that one.
 

Cait Sith

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Are you going to criticize Valverde now?
Not really. Losing 2 seasons in a row in that fashion sure looks bad but it's a Cup competition where anythink can happen. The supposed manager of the decade Guardiola lost 1-5 overall last season to the same team, before that he conceded 6 to Monaco. Flavour of the month coach ten Hag gave up a 3 goal lead in just 45 minutes on home soil. Another supposed master tactician Tuchel lost the French Cup final and gave up a 3 goal lead to the United U17 team. Sir Alex won 2 CLs in 2 decades, one on penalties, the other with a last minute miracle.

These things happen. CL is unpredictable and Barca don't have the team to demand the CL trophy at all costs like they are clearly above anyone else. Messi, Suarez, Busquets, Rakitic, Pique, Alba. Basically the entire team is 30+ years old. Coutinho looks garbage and Dembélé is always injured. No leaders in the team either. One or two goals conceded against an elite team away from home and you can be sure they are able to concede 5 or 6. That corner goal or Alba backpass just proves the problems lie deeper than the coach's tactical setup. Literally 9 out of 10 coaches would set up exactly like Valverde with 3 goal lead away from home. Only Pep wouldn't and he'd concede goals gallore regardless. Not everything is the coach's sole responsibility.

Of course the Barca fanbase is the most fickle in the world as I said some months ago. Hoping to lose the Copa del Rey final, crying about Messi's Ballon d'Or chances, already talking about not watching Barca next season. A team that is about to win 2 doubles in 2 seasons. 90 % are YouTube comment section fans who won't be there in 3 years. As if they hire some no name coach like Setién who has Betis in relegation form and they suddenly turn CL favourites again. :lol:

Should deal with it, Barca before 2006 were nothing in Europe and that unbelievable generation with Eto'o, Alves, Xavi, Ronaldinho, Iniesta, David Villa, Messi etc. is coming to an end, only Messi still there somewhat in his prime.
 
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hasanejaz88

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Sickening game. But proud AF.

Ajax can certainly be proud of this season. Why do they have to let all the kids go though, one more season to see if they bag do better :(

I'm more happy at the fact that they never seemed in doubt it losing their ties as well. They comfortably went through their group, best Madrid and Juve being clearly the better team.
 

do.ob

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Ajax can certainly be proud of this season. Why do they have to let all the kids go though, one more season to see if they bag do better :(

I'm more happy at the fact that they never seemed in doubt it losing their ties as well. They comfortably went through their group, best Madrid and Juve being clearly the better team.
When you're a stepping stone (and play in an undesireable league on top of that) you probably have to give those kids assurances that you will let them leave if a good offer comes along. If they block the transfer of say de Ligt then the next kid will demand a modest release clause to prevent the same thing happening to him.
 

hasanejaz88

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When you're a stepping stone (and play in an undesireable league on top of that) you probably have to give those kids assurances that you will let them leave if a good offer comes along. If they block the transfer of say de Ligt then the next kid will demand a modest release clause to prevent the same thing happening to him.
Yea man as a mutual fan of the BL, I understand the problem of the league, let alone teams within it, being a stepping stone.

Still, it would've been nice to see then have one go.
 

hasanejaz88

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Worth watching imo
Really thought provoking analysis by Barnes regarding us and comparisons with Liverpool in the 90's. We have had three different managers with three entirely different philosophies but none were given the time to fully implement it, partly because they weren't able to bring in immediate results but also because they didn't play to our old style under Sir Alex.

Any manager that will come in will have the double pressure of bringing results and also playing to the style expected of United.



:lol::lol::lol:
I didn't see a minute of the match so I can't comment personally but from the reports I read Ajax did the opposite. They adopted a defensive strategy outside of their usual style and invited Spurs on.

On a side note, Bein Sports coverage is so much better than the tripe BT throws. BT are like a bunch of kids saying nothing actually worth listening to. They just rant or rave depending on the result with no concrete analysis other than narrating what's on the screen.