AZ ALKMAAR striker Vangelis Pavlidis has insisted that he aims to bring his poor record against Scottish clubs to an end when they host Dundee United tonight.
The 23-year-old was part of the AZ side knocked out of the Europa League by Celtic last season. And he followed that up with a 1-0 defeat to United at Tannadice last Thursday in the first leg of the Conference League third-round qualifier.
The Greek internationalalso revealed that he has spoken to the Celtic striker Giorgos Giakoumakis about the threats that United pose.
Pavlidis said: “I don’t have good results against Scottish teams but we need to change that! I asked Giorgos Giakoumakis about Dundee United because I wanted to prepare myself for the game.
“I spoke to him before the first leg but now we have played them so we know more and are focused. He explained a few things to us, which was good. I didn’t enjoy the physical aspect as much because we lost! But we have showed before that we can change these scores around and it wasn’t surprising how Dundee United played, we knew it would be difficult.
“Tomorrow will be a big difference compared to last week. There’s no extra pressure on us, we have good enough players to score goals.
“We know we can score a goal and that’s what we want to do tomorrow. Of course we haven’t thought about going out, we are only thinking about winning - we are a big club who has to play in Europe.
“Our status is to be there, we don’t want to be outside of it so we have to give everything.”
Manager Pascal Jansen said that AZ did not underestimate United in the first leg. The Tangerines ran out 1-0 winners thanks to Glenn Middleton’s second half strike.
Jansen said: “Did we underestimate United? Not at all, not for one second because they simply wouldn’t allow that and the same goes for the staff.
“We are very confident we’ll get the job done but football is football. We are under no more pressure than usual because we feel we have a spot in Europe always so you have to fight for it always. We know Dundee United will give us a big battle so we have worked on our game plan from last week.”
