{"id":204,"date":"2013-04-17T13:01:29","date_gmt":"2013-04-17T13:01:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/motz.football\/analysis\/2013\/04\/17\/match-analysis-psv-eindhoven-v-ajax\/"},"modified":"2017-12-09T06:11:17","modified_gmt":"2017-12-09T06:11:17","slug":"match-analysis-psv-eindhoven-v-ajax","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/motz.football\/analysis\/2013\/04\/17\/match-analysis-psv-eindhoven-v-ajax\/","title":{"rendered":"PSV Eindhoven v Ajax (1-3)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Match date: 14 April 2013<\/em><\/p>\n

The Eredivisie has had a great title race all year. Coming into the weekend, Ajax were leading, but the likes of PSV, Vitesse, and Feyernood all have a mathematical chance, if not a realistic one, to win the title.<\/p>\n

With that said, Frank de Boer made a few changes to Ajax\u2019s usual XI bringing in Christian Poulsen, Viktor Fischer, and Koelbienn Sigthorsson. He opted to play Lasse Schone on the right side of the front three in their 4-3-3 rather than in the midfield three, with Schone\u2019s usual role being taken by Poulsen.<\/p>\n

PSV played with a 4-2-3-1, with Mark van Bommel, Marc Strootman, and Ola Toivonen, at least on paper, making up PSV\u2019s midfield three; a strong, physical midfield three which could be seen as the reason Poulsen was in Ajax\u2019s XI.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Ebb and Flow<\/strong><\/p>\n

The game started without either team really getting an upper hand on the play. Within the first few minutes of the match, Christian Poulsen made two hard challenges, one off the ball and the other a very late shoulder charge into van Bommel. The Danish international didn\u2019t get into the referee\u2019s notebook, but showed why he was in team. PSV have a very physical side and weren\u2019t going to play as good of football as Ajax so Poulsen\u2019s inclusion was more to make sure that Eriksen and Siem de Jong had a chance to get forward.<\/p>\n

Ajax Find Their Form<\/strong><\/p>\n

After the back and forth that the match began with, Ajax started to take control of the ball. Up until the match, they have average 61% possession in their Eredivisie matches. They weren\u2019t at their best when combining in the final third of the field on the day, but they used their width well, especially on the right hand side which saw 45% of their attacks, compared to 27% down the middle and 28% down the left.<\/p>\n

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Perhaps the more impressive side of their game was when they were without the ball and their pressing ability. Siem de Jong had 7 interceptions as he, Eriksen, and Sigthorsson put pressure on PSV\u2019s centre backs and Waterman. Below Sigthorsson had just chased a ball back to Waterman, who tried to play a ball into PSV\u2019s midfield, but with Eriksen pressing, Ajax won the ball back and Fischer was given a good chance on goal which Waterman parried just far enough way from Sigthorsson.<\/p>\n

\"image\"<\/p>\n

Ajax Attack Wide<\/strong><\/p>\n

As mentioned before, Ajax attacked down the right side 45% of the time. This was down to a couple of different reason; the first being that Diers Mertens, though an obvious talent going forward, usually doesn\u2019t have to track back too far against other teams, and didn\u2019t really track van Rhijn\u2019s runs forward too often. Mertens\u2019 average position throughout the game showed him as the second highest PSV attacker, right behind Jens.<\/p>\n

\"image\"<\/p>\n

The second reason was that Lassa Schone is more of a central midfielder and thus naturally drifted inside to create a 4v3 in Ajax\u2019s favour. This allowed van Rhijn space to get forward and go 1v1 with Willems or, with one of Schone, Eriksen, de Jong, or Sigthorsson, create a 2v1.<\/p>\n

While on Schone, his presence in the side, along with Poulsen\u2019s, allowed things toopen up for Eriksen who was relatively unmarked by Van Bommel and Strootman, and consistently found space higher up the pitch. The first two goals for Ajax came from Eriksen finding space in wide areas, especially the second where he had the whole left side of PSV\u2019s final third to run into after Fischer dragged Hutchinson high up the pitch and Eriksen combined well with Blind. The first came when Eriksen easily got past Willems on the left, got to the byline and pulled back to Fischer who missed his kick, but van Bommel pushed the ball straight into the path of Sigthorsson to give Ajax a 1-0 lead.<\/p>\n

Ajax\u2019s third goal was a bit of the same. Eriksen again was afford too much time on the ball by Strootman and van Bommel and played a through ball into Ajax substitute Derk Boerrigter who outmuscled PSV\u2019s substitute Pieters (who had only made one appearance before this one in the league, which resulted in a red card) and slid the ball past Waterman.<\/p>\n

Conclusion<\/strong><\/p>\n

Ajax didn\u2019t play their best game in terms of their usual attacking style, but got the result with Eriksen the key man in all three of their goals as well as PSV\u2019s opener.<\/p>\n

PSV afforded Eriksen too much time on the ball in their half of the field and only really pressed him when he was in Ajax\u2019s half, which led to their first goal, but overall, PSV looked a much better side when they would press high up the pitch as a unit. Unfortunately, most of the time they didn\u2019t do this and Toivoven and Lens let Moisander, Alderweireld, and Poulsen have too much time on the ball and allow them to easily build from the back.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Match date: 14 April 2013 The Eredivisie has had a great title race all year. Coming into the weekend, Ajax were leading, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":684,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[814],"tags":[9,8,440,12,456,720,719,718,2,441,675,3,11],"class_list":["post-204","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-eredivisie","tag-4-2-3-1","tag-4-3-3","tag-ajax","tag-analysis","tag-christian-eriksen","tag-dick-advocaat","tag-eindhoven","tag-eredivisie","tag-football","tag-frank-de-boer","tag-psv","tag-soccer","tag-tactics"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/motz.football\/analysis\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/1-3.png?fit=500%2C363&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/motz.football\/analysis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/motz.football\/analysis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/motz.football\/analysis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/motz.football\/analysis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/motz.football\/analysis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=204"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/motz.football\/analysis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":685,"href":"https:\/\/motz.football\/analysis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204\/revisions\/685"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/motz.football\/analysis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/684"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/motz.football\/analysis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=204"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/motz.football\/analysis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=204"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/motz.football\/analysis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=204"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}