Ajax come to Celtic Park on the back of a 5-1 home win over Cambuur to retain their four point lead at the top of the Dutch League.
Frank de Boer’s side have won 11 out of 13 league matches but like Celtic have still to record a win in the Europa League.
Second bottom Cambuur, with seven draws and six defeats in the league, offered little resistance in the Amsterdam Arena with Ajax leading 4-1 at the break.
After the match de Boer said: “They played very compact. We had more opportunities to attack but all in it was a reasonable result.
“We had a lot of pressure in the second half and should have scored more but on Thursday Celtic will be tougher opponents.”
Last week Ajax had to deal with Johan Cruyff quitting his executive role at the club after disagreeing with the direction that the club was moving in.
More than ever the Amsterdam side are having to rely on their Academy to produce players with de Boer comfortable with that strategy.
“We’ve won four championships in the last five years with between sixty and seventy per cent of our players from our own academy,” he explained. “At times we’ve refreshed the selection with a new acquisition, but often with a youth player as well.
“We need to keep the bar high for youth players to enter. Instead of needing two years to ripen, that they can almost directly be fit enough for the first team.
“It’s the only way that Dutch football can survive. We must accept that we need to make do with young guys. That results in fluctuations in the performances. One time it will be amazing, and the next time it will be bad.
“There are still people who think that we can still win the Champions League. That’s very difficult, because we can’t compete with the big competitions anymore. We can’t just fill a hole in our selection with a player who costs sixty million.”
We have a Mountain to Climb here in the Group but we have to believe we still have a chance.
Of course we have a chance … but not much of one. A good place to start would have been thumping Killie …
Well Frank is being frank, even Ajax have bad games/periods with their team while working a system of promoting youth, they’ve being doing this for quite some time and it has paid off for them more times than not.
I can see that Celtic are aiming towards this way of running the club, unfortunately we live in a world where patience is in short supply, we will get there, it takes time to get things moving in this direction.
We have young Nesbit and Tierney coming through and they are both very good prospects, Ronny is known for building up players and he will get the best out of these two lads and give hope to the others who wish follow them.
Next time any of us look to instant results have an instant coffee, and ponder the time and effort it took to give you that instant gratifying experience, it takes time and effort to get to the end result and when we get there we can kick back, put our feet up and enjoy the experience.
The MSM are petrified of the day Ronny’s roar breaks the sound barrier as they’ll never be able to touch him, they’ll be left in the wake of the Ronny Roar. They keep beating him with results in Europe and the odd glitch in the league – Why do no other teams get the same level of treatment?
The MSM need to change their tact from negativity to positivity, they have a role in building up a feel good factor in Scottish football, and maybe just maybe we might be able to attract some good sponsors to invest in our game.
Who in their right mind would want a product associated with such receptiveness of negativity? Im not saying the MSM shouldn’t be critical, but it needs to be measured and distributed fairly, the way it’s going it’s like a broken record – Change the tune!
Ronny is a builder, and he has just finished the foundations.
#keepthefaith
Well said Paul, to me the Scottish press are as bent as the SFA !
HH
Ronny is a builder? I’ve heard it all now.
As he said himself we’re a selling club, as any promising talents want away to the premiership ASAP. That’s what he’s trying to build with, jugde him at the end of the season that’s only fair.
HH
Who pays attention to or gives any credence to the media in Scotland, seriously? Not I for one.
Having watched us on the pitch yesterday and in Europe all season, I’ll take a draw vs Ajax now.
The Europa League is a good 4 or 5 levels above the SPL, and we’ve yet to prove we can do anything against decent European teams this season whilst being top of the league domestically.