Ajax v Standard Liège background

Ajax will aim to avoid a sixth successive home draw in UEFA competition as they welcome Standard Liège in Group G, the Belgian side hardly sparkling on their travels of late.

Previous meetings
• Ajax and Standard are meeting for the first time in UEFA competition.

• Ajax's 14 games against Belgian opponents have ended W8 D2 L4 (W5 L1 in Amsterdam). Those matches include the 1988 European Cup Winners' Cup final, where they lost 1-0 to Mechelen in Strasbourg.

• Standard's record in six encounters with Dutch teams is W1 D2 L3 (D1 L2 in the Netherlands). That lone victory came in the first of those fixtures – 3-1 at home to Feyenoord in the UEFA Cup in November 1973.

Form guide
• Ajax have drawn their last five home games in Europe: 2-2, 0-0 and then 1-1 in the three most recent.

• Standard have lost five of their last six European away matches, the only exception a 1-0 triumph at Željezničar in the 2015/16 UEFA Europa League third qualifying round.

• After three successful attempts to get through their UEFA Cup/UEFA Europa League group, Ajax failed to qualify for the first time in the 2015/16 group stage.

• Standard have progressed in two of their five UEFA Cup and UEFA Europa League group stage campaigns – but missed the cut in their last two attempts, most recently in 2014/15.

Links and trivia
• The journey from Liege to Amsterdam is around 200km.

• Standard midfielder Eyong Enoh was an Ajax player from 2008–14, the Cameroonian lifting two league championships and a Dutch Cup.

The coaches
• A Dutch title-winning midfielder with Feyenoord, Peter Bosz returned from Israel to take charge of Ajax in May 2016. Bosz has also coached Heracles and Vitesse in the Netherlands, and had a brief tenure at Maccabi Tel-Aviv in 2016.

• Aleksandar Janković replaced Yannick Ferrera as Standard coach in early September. Once assistant to fellow Serb Slavoljub Muslin at several clubs, the 44-year-old has coached Crvena zvezda, Serbia's Under-21s and – in Belgium – Lokeren and Mechelen.