Failing in every conceivable metric: How Ajax ended up bottom of the Eredivisie

The Eredivisie table makes for stark reading right now. Ajax are bottom of the table, 25 points behind long-time rivals PSV Eindhoven in first.

A 5-2 defeat to PSV last weekend was Ajax’s fifth league defeat of the season. Their only league win so far came against recently promoted Heracles in the opening week, while they had never previously been bottom of the Eredivisie table until now.

At the time of writing, they are winless in 10 games across all competitions, also something that has never happened before. Their current five-game losing streak in the Eredivisie is also something that — you guessed it — has never happened before.

This is a historically bad Ajax team in an institutional crisis that will take several years to correct. Several off-field issues have led to Ajax’s decline since the 2021-22 league title triumph, but few expected the club to be this bad, so soon.

Following a dismal third-place finish under Alfred Schreuder and interim manager Johnny Heitinga, fans expressed confusion when Maurice Steijn was announced as their new manager in June this year.

Leading Sparta Rotterdam to a sixth-placed finish in the Eredivisie in 2022-23 saw Steijn described as an “overachiever” by the (now dismissed) director of football Sven Mislintat, but the 49-year-old was an odd cultural fit for Ajax.

Steijn’s eight-year senior career saw him play at ADO Den Haag before moving to NAC Breda. Being a former Ajax player is not a requirement for being a good Ajax manager, but Steijn’s lack of priors meant fans were likely to turn if the side started the season poorly. Steijn was hired on a three-year contract as part of Mislintat’s attempt to modernise many of the club practices without the financial resources that come with qualifying for the Champions League.

Twelve new players joined the club, while close to €150million (£130m; $158m) was recouped in player sales and the club’s current wage bill is closer to its 2012-17 iteration, where no player earns more than €1m a year. But while the club’s net spend looks healthier, the squad’s playing quality took a hit.

0 – This is the first @OnsOranje match to see none of the 11 starting players ever having played an Eredivisie match for Ajax since 6 January 1981 (0 against Italy). Omitted. pic.twitter.com/gg5S4un6eX

— OptaJohan (@OptaJohan) October 13, 2023

“Voetbal International publishes a preview every season, in which we ask prominent Dutch football journalists what the ranking of the Eredivisie will be,” says Pieter Zwart, an editor from the publication.

“Only one journalist predicted Ajax would finish first. Most people predicted a third place. The lowest prediction for Ajax was fourth.”

It’s alarming that anything Ajax have achieved this season is due to players no longer at the club. Their place in the Europa League group stage owes a debt to Mohammed Kudus, who scored a hat-trick in the first leg of a qualifier against Bulgarian side Ludogorets Razgrad. It was the player’s final game for the club before signing for West Ham United.

Ajax lost the second leg 1-0 a week later but went through 4-2 on aggregate. By the time the summer transfer window closed, they had become a club with Steijn — a competent manager with no big club experience — in charge of a squad boasting few players with top-level Eredivisie experience.

“The trust between Steijn and Mislintat evaporated very early in the season,” says Zwart. “Steijn changed the language in the dressing room to Dutch at the beginning of the pre-season. The previous spoken language in the dressing room was English under Erik ten Hag.

“Afterwards, he got 11 foreign players who didn’t speak Dutch. Steijn didn’t know most of the signings. After a 0-0 draw at Fortuna Sittard, he said in the press that Josip Sutalo was the only signing that he liked. This was not well received by the other 11 signings.”

Last month, Opta’s underlying numbers for the league suggested Ajax were the worst side in the Dutch top flight. They are failing in nearly every conceivable metric needed from a modern football team.

The best Ajax teams are known for their positional fluidity as much as for their comfort in possession, but Steijn’s attempts to play a progressive 4-3-3 ended up with football being played in slow, predictable right angles. Devoid of decent passing options or clever movement ahead, Steijn’s team were either moving the ball sideways between them or knocking hopeful punts down the line.

Teams have found it easy to halt Ajax’s rudimentary build-up patterns, moving to press centre-backs Jorrel Hato and Sutalo whenever they come on to the ball, knowing neither man is too comfortable in possession and the ball can then be forced out wide.

From there, full-backs such as Borna Sosa and Anton Gaaei find themselves with a difficult choice: either attempt a difficult pass into central midfield and set off a likely pressing trigger, or play the ball down the wing. This is a particularly grievous sin for Ajax players and fans alike: Johan Cruyff banned passes from the right-back to the right winger when taking charge of the club’s training, believing it to be a pointless and predictable means of ball progression.

Ajax’s defensive midfield options, such as Benjamin Tahirovic, have duly found it difficult to feed the players ahead of them, leaving the attack isolated and adrift. Club captain Steven Bergwijn has three goals this season but two came against Heracles in the first game. Brian Brobbey (who has joked about reuniting with Ten Hag at Manchester United) has struggled as the team’s No 9.

Kenneth Taylor and Branco van den Boomen after the 5-2 defeat against PSV last weekend (Marcel van Dorst/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

After scoring 29 goals in the Championship last season, Chuba Akpom was signed for €12.3million in the summer and dubbed one of Mislintat’s statistical overachievers for the new-look Ajax but, rather than use Akpom as a No 10 or a starting striker as Michael Carrick did for Middlesbrough, Steijn played him on the right wing or brought him on as a substitute. Akpom has yet to score or assist a league goal for his new club.

When out of possession, Steijn’s side attempted to play in a compact 4-5-1 shape and made little effort to press the opponent in their half. The issue there was that Ajax’s players left far too much space in between the lines for teams to play through. In addition to that, they have been terrible at defending crosses. The below image — recording the shots Ajax have allowed so far — illustrates how poor their defensive efforts have been this season.

This season, Ajax are a horrible mix of bad and unlucky, giving up chances that are both high quality and in high volume. On top of that, they’ve let in more than four goals higher than their xGA (expected goals conceded), suggesting they are in a negative spiral when trying to prevent the opposition from scoring. The 21 goals Ajax have conceded is also the most by the club at this stage of a season — eclipsing their previous worst of 18 after eight games in 1964-65 and 1980-81.

Ponderous with the ball and poor at defending when they don’t have it, a 4-3 defeat away at Utrecht encapsulated the current malaise. What turned out to be Steijn’s final game in charge saw the 36-time Dutch champions go 2-0 down, battle back to lead 2-3, only for Utrecht to equalise and the game to be temporarily paused due to fans throwing objects onto the pitch.

When the match was restarted, Ajax capitulated to a late goal from the home team. Fans grew frustrated and things became untenable for the manager.

“Steijn, time to say goodbye!” wrote the club’s notorious F-Side Ultras the following day. “We’d rather go to Brighton without a coach than you. You’ve had enough time. Seventeenth place is unworthy of Ajax.”

Hedwiges Maduro took over on a caretaker basis for their Europa League group game against Brighton & Hove Albion, but Ajax repeated their frailties in a straightforward 2-0 defeat.

The Ajax squad of 2023-24 is the youngest in the Eredivisie (at an average of 22 years and 163 days). It contains academy graduates such as midfielder Kenneth Taylor, who had previously been touted to do great things for the club but is now considered a mediocre facilitator. Then there are an assortment of players who could potentially be sold on for a profit after two good seasons, such as Branco van den Boomen. The imperfect collection has led to prominent voices in Dutch media expressing concern over the lack of quality players who can help Ajax win games right now.

Early in the season, Ajax legend Marco van Basten said Mislintat’s changes had left the club unrecognisable and they should be termed “FC Amsterdam” instead. Following Steijn’s dismissal, Wesley Sneijder said the choice of manager would not change things as “the players just aren’t good enough”.

Rafael van der Vaart — who is known for his spiky form of punditry — said Ajax “have to think like a relegation candidate at the moment. That’s very sad, but it’s true. You are no longer Ajax. You have to assume that you are not better than your opponent because they simply do not have the qualities for that”.

Rafael van der Vaart (NESimages/Raymond Smit/DeFodi Images via Getty Images)

In theory, Ajax should have enough quality to return to the top half of the table under the right manager. Two league fixtures at home — against 16th-placed FC Volendam and eighth-placed Heerenveen — might allow Ajax to address the slide before they face Brighton in the Europa League once again.

Louis van Gaal returned to the club at the start of October in a nebulous advisory capacity and, on October 30, the club named John van ‘t Schip as their new head coach until the end of the season. He will have a technical position at the club the season after on a contract that runs to 2025, but it still makes for remarkable reading. Ajax — the biggest football club in the Netherlands — will complete the 2023-24 season with a caretaker manager, a caretaker director of football and a caretaker CEO.

“Ajax is now last in the Eredivisie with only five measly points,” said a statement on the Ajax supporters’ club website following the 5-2 defeat to PSV.

“That hurts a lot. Still, we can draw some strength from the first half in Eindhoven. The players showed they can indeed play football. Hopefully, that will give us some confidence in the coming weeks, where Ajax will have to climb out of the depths.”

(Top photos: Getty Images)