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In the club's last match before the winter break, Vitesse lost an early 2-0 lead, but managed to salvage a point against Heracles on Saturday, drawing 2-2. The Eredivisie is on break until mid-January, but rest assured, WAGNH's Arnhem office remains open for business and we'll be providing plenty of coverage on Vitesse's transfer activity as the club looks to bolster its squad for the push towards the Eredivisie title and Champions League football.
As always, here's our latest look into what's happening with our second-favourite club.
Vitesse draws Heracles 2-2, goals from Piazon and van Aanholt
Despite goals from both Patrick van Aanholt and Lucas Piazon, Vitesse was unable to hold on to the lead, as winger Brian Linssen scored twice in the second half. Ajax came back to defeat Roda JC after 17-year-old Jairo Riedewald scored twice in his debut after coming on as a substitute in the 80th minute with Ajax down 1-0, and managed to take the top spot in the Eredivisie on goal differential. Roda JC certainly hasn't been doing Vitesse any favours lately, what with eliminating Vitesse from the KNVB Cup last week and failing to hold off Ajax on Sunday.
As in recent weeks, we have the good fortune to be able to reproduce the Vitesse portions of the excellent loan reports that @chelseayouth puts out each week (you can view the full match report here) -
"It’s not often that we’ll feature a left-back scoring twice in a week, but that’s what Patrick van Aanholt did during the past seven days. His first goal was a consolation effort in Vitesse’s 3-1 KNVB Beker (equivalent of the FA Cup) defeat at Roda, and he followed that up with his fourth of the season away to Heracles on Saturday evening.
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He was easily Vitesse’s best player in the cup defeat, as Peter Bosz’s side turned in one of their poorest performances of the season so far. Their effort on Saturday wasn’t much better and the relative thinness of their squad is beginning to tell, especially with the suspension-enforced absence of forward Mike Havenaar. It has meant Lucas Piazon featuring as the centre forward and whilst he scored against Heracles and did a good job overall, he’s much more effective as a wide forward.
There was the usual dose of action for the remaining assortment of Chelsea loanees at the Gelredome, with Christian Atsu getting the most of it. The Ghanaian got 83 and 71 minutes respectively and has taken Gael Kakuta’s spot away from him permanently at this juncture. Kakuta missed the Roda defeat through injury and played a little more than fifteen minutes at Heracles; at this stage it would not be a surprise if he moved in January.
Sam Hutchinson played three minutes at Roda as a substitute but was ruled out of the trip to Heracles because the match was played on an artificial surface and could have posed further problems to his ailing knees. Cristian Cuevas, as usual, was not involved at all."
Highlights from Vitesse-Heracles match
Much to my chagrin, the 2-2 draw apparently did not merit a Sfeerverslag video from the legendary Vitesse video team. However, they did see fit to produce a "Terugblik" video, which is more of a standard match highlight video than the epic productions that are Sfeerverslag videos. The video is still very much worth a watch (I found the soundtrack selection to be, erm, rather bold), but fingers crossed for lots of Sfeerverslag after Vitesse comes back from the winter break.
Happy Holidays from Vitesse
Holiday spirit is alive and well in Arnhem, and the Vitesse lads want to wish everyone a happy holiday season.
