Ajax in crisis after Erik ten Hag moved to Man United
Winless since November, dire in Europe, a manager hanging by a thread after crisis talks and club icon Blind forced out… As Erik ten Hag rebuilds Man United, his old club Ajax are mired in DISASTER
- Ajax seem to have taken a downward turn after Erik ten Hag left for Man United
- His successor Alfred Schreuder kept his job following a crisis meeting
- They sit a fifth in the Eredivisie table and were hopeless in Champions League
While Erik ten Hag rebuilds Manchester United into a trophy-winning force, his successor at crisis-hit Ajax finds himself clinging on to his job.
Alfred Schreuder was selected to take Ajax forward because he knew the club inside out and understood the sky-high expectations. Indeed, he was Ten Hag’s assistant at one point.
But with the team winless since November, fifth in the Eredivisie and holding emergency board meetings to discuss Schreuder’s future after almost all the squad gave him a vote of no confidence, that decision increasingly looks an ill-judged one.
Dutch champions Ajax are going through a slump following Erik ten Hag’s departure
Ten Hag is doing well at Manchester United as he tries to build them back into champions
But his successor at Ajax, Alfred Schreuder, is hanging onto his job by the skin of his teeth
For now, Schreuder has been given a stay of execution ahead of a run of winnable games but everything is certainly far from rosy at the reigning Dutch champions.
We have seen at United that Ten Hag is a strict manager and can rub some players up the wrong way. However, his discipline gets results and that is something that is currently missing at Ajax.
Ajax have drawn their last five league matches and are winless in six either side of the World Cup break – quite often, they only drop points in six matches across a whole season, so this very much constitutes a crisis.
They have been top of the standings this season but they’re presently eight points adrift of leaders Feyenoord. AZ Alkmaar, PSV Eindhoven and FC Twente are also above them.
A battling second-half performance at De Kuip earned a 1-1 draw with leaders Feyenoord on Sunday, with Davy Klaassen equalising 19 minutes from time.
Davy Klaassen scored Ajax’s equaliser as they took a point at leaders Feyenoord on Sunday
But the draw against their Rotterdam rivals did little to alleviate the pressure on Schreuder
Ajax’s bad run
All Eredivisie games
November 6 PSV Eindhoven (H) L 1-2
November 9 Vitesse Arnhem (H) 2-2
November 12 Emmen (A) 3-3
January 8 NEC Nijmegen (A) 1-1
January 14 FC Twente (H) 0-0
January 22 Feyenoord (A) 1-1
Without that goal, it’s highly likely Schreuder would have been fired. But when the Ajax hierarchy met at the Johan Cruijff Arena on Monday, it was noted that the players fought for their manager.
Ajax’s Champions League campaign was a disaster. Admittedly, they were drawn into a tough group containing Liverpool, Napoli and Rangers but they finished a distant third.
Rangers were beaten home and away with plenty to spare but Ajax simply could not compete with Liverpool and Napoli, losing all four meetings.
Even worse, Napoli smashed them 6-1 in Amsterdam, the club’s all-time record home defeat in Europe.
It made a mockery of Ten Hag’s claim in his farewell interview with Ajax’s website last summer that the team was ‘Europe-proof’.
‘There’s a sense of disappointment when Ajax get eliminated, even by a big club,’ said the man who guided them to within minutes of a Champions League final in 2019.
But this season, Ajax weren’t anywhere near the class of Napoli and Liverpool in a clear sign of regression.
What is worrying is that Ajax have failed to win each and every time they’ve been confronted by a big opponent under Schreuder, adding in defeats to PSV in the Eredivisie and the Johan Cruyff Shield in July.
It emerged after Sunday’s draw in Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf that several senior players, including Dusan Tadic and Steven Berghuis, requested a team meeting with Ajax’s mental coach Joost Leenders to voice their concerns about the coaching set-up.
Steven Bergwijn looks dejected during Ajax’s 6-1 thrashing by Napoli in the Champions League
The club’s European campaign was a disaster, with four defeats from six in the group stage
During the course of this chat, Leenders reportedly asked the players to raise their hands if they thought the coaching staff were to blame for this season’s failings.
‘Most, if not all’ duly raised their hands, an emphatic vote of no confidence in Schreuder and his team.
The Dutch media described it as a ‘fist on the chin’ for a coach ‘who has one leg in the grave’ but it was also pointed out that grievances about, say, the fitness coach or the goalkeeping coach, had all been lumped together.
Schreuder has been given a vote of confidence following the poor run of form
Anyway, there was no evidence of the players throwing in the towel to accelerate Schreuder’s departure during Sunday’s Klassieker.
‘We are growing but maybe I am the only one who sees this,’ Schreuder said afterwards.
For his sake, thankfully not. The Ajax hierarchy, during their crisis meeting on Monday, focused on the mitigating circumstances that have kept him in his job for the time being.
The performance in Rotterdam was one, also a forgiving fixture list that sees Ajax’s next four league fixtures come against teams in the lower half – Volendam at home on Thursday, then Excelsior, rock bottom Cambuur and RKC Waalwijk.
There was an admission that Schreuder might need a bigger brains trust, with an extra assistant to be added to Matthias Kaltenbach, Michael Reiziger and Richard Witschge.
It has been reported that several players would like to see former Ajax and Chelsea defender Winston Bogarde, who left as an assistant coach when Ten Hag did, return.
But the board also acknowledged that promises made to Schreuder over player sales had not been kept.
Speaking to De Telegraaf ahead of the weekend, Schreuder said: ‘The club told me that a maximum of four players were going to be sold in the summer.’
He continued: ‘Due to the offers that were being made, I understand that the club decided to sell. But then you know the start will be difficult for a manager.
Schreuder is set to be given an ‘extra assistant’ to add to his current coaching staff
Several players have voiced concerns about the coaching staff at the club
‘I wasn’t happy when Antony left [to reunite with Ten Hag at Old Trafford]. We still have a good squad, but he was an extra weapon.’
United fans may beg to differ on current form but Ajax couldn’t resist the £85million on offer for the Brazilian, who was agitating for a move.
Trouble was, his departure came off the back of other high profile exits such as Lisandro Martinez (also Man United), Sebastien Haller (Borussia Dortmund), Ryan Gravenberch (Bayern Munich) and Nicolas Tagliafico (Lyon), which all made Ajax rather toothless.
It is true that Ajax reinvested a substantial chunk of the money. Holland international winger Steven Bergwijn came from Tottenham, forward Brian Brobbey returned from RB Leipzig, while Calvin Bassey, Owen Wijndal and Lucas Ocampos (on loan) strengthened the defence.
Bassey, who came in from Rangers, has been especially criticised for his performances. The former Holland midfielder turned pundit Wesley Sneijder has been scathing, telling Schreuder to drop the Nigerian back in November.
Ten Hag took defender Lisandro Martinez to Manchester United with him in the summer
United then returned to sign Antony in a deal that was worth £85m to the Ajax coffers
After the Feyenoord game, Sneijder said Bassey and Jorge Sanchez, his counterpart on the right-side of defence, were ‘two of the worst defenders in the top eight of the Eredivisie’ and guilty of ‘playing hide and seek’ with the ball.
Schreuder clearly disagrees, or cannot see their faults, because both are firmly established as No 1 choices in their positions.
Despite that, the coach has been criticised for his chopping and changing of the team, a sign he is unable to decide on is strongest line-up and an indictment of the summer transfer strategy.
It is now accepted that the failure to replace Marc Overmars as technical director led to summer transfer dealings not being as focused as during the Ten Hag years.
Overmars, the former Arsenal winger, quit his role in February last year after sending a series of ‘inappropriate messages’ to female colleagues.
Marc Overmars resigned as technical director a year ago but wasn’t adequately replaced
He has since suffered serious health issues, with his heart suffering ‘irreparable’ damage following a mild stroke last month.
Gerry Hamstra and Klaas-Jan Huntelaar, the club’s two directors of football, have tried to fill the void but neither are as shrewd as Overmars when it comes to recruitment, impacting Schreuder.
‘It is important that a technical director will arrive at Ajax to replace Overmars,’ Schreuder said at the weekend.
‘Hamstra and Huntelaar are not getting the full responsibility at the technical area. Much work is now being spread.’
Schreuder also mentioned the need to replace Daley Blind, the vice-captain under Ten Hag and a much-trusted and versatile member of the team.
Daley Blind has left for Bayern Munich after the club legend was forced out of Ajax
Blind, 32, has signed for Bayern Munich but the abrupt nature of his exit from the club he’d hoped to finish his career at – or at least his side of the story – raised plenty of eyebrows.
In an interview with AD, Blind spoke about how he envisaged walking out in front of the Ajax crowd with his son Lowen after a farewell game, just as his dad Danny did with him.
‘But it reached a point where I was not even welcome at the club anymore, the club where I walked around since I was seven years old,’ Blind said.
‘On the 26th of December, the club told me I was no longer welcome from the 27th December on.’
He recounted an argument with Schreuder in the dressing room during the match with RKC in October – after demanding the coach be clearer with his instructions about pressing, Schreuder apparently replied: ‘You shut up! Shut your mouth, and sit down!’
Soon Blind had been demoted to fourth-choice left-back and he said nobody in the club’s hierarchy made any effort to patch things up.
Ajax’s Edson Alvarez questions what’s going on during the weekend draw with Feyenoord
‘Nobody from the Ajax direction made ANY attempt. Zero. Actually the opposite, they made it look like I was the one who wanted to get out,’ he said.
Given Blind has played 333 games for Ajax over two spells there, it seemed a very shoddy way to treat a club stalwart and a sign of the present dysfunction.
Sneijder remarked: ‘He [Schreuder] can’t manage. I’ve said it before: managing a team is much more important than setting the lines. Anyone can do that.
‘But how do you deal with those players? He’s slowly losing the dressing room.’
Schreuder was showing signs of feeling the pressure just three months into the job. He snapped at reporters who’d been critical in mid-October after a 7-1 thrashing of Excelsior.
Schreuder had already snapped at reporters in October and is still feeling the pressure
‘The truth is that I cannot build a completely new team in three months. I do my best, but I have to be given time. If I don’t get that it’s a shame,’ he ranted.
‘If they fire me for that, I don’t care. But I decide here at Ajax who plays and who doesn’t play. This team needs time. If people think it will happen in three months, forget it.
‘Go and get your coaching diplomas and don’t preach nonsense on television, because you have no idea at all.’
Unfortunately for Schreuder, plenty of Ajax fans are now saying the same about him.
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