£250m on Ajax old boys: Man Utd have given Erik ten Hag all he could have wanted after Matthijs de Ligt and Noussair Mazraoui transfers - now manager has to repay the Red Devils' faith in him

The manager is well aware of his reputation for signing Dutch or Eredivisie players although he was able to politely laugh it off while speaking to fanzine United We Stand last December.

"It’s a perception. It’s used to make a point,” he said. "Has Casemiro played Eredivisie? Eriksen played in Eredivisie 10 years ago, then for Spurs and Inter. I’ve even seen Mason Mount aligned to the Eredivisie. That was nothing to do with the Eredivisie. And, if you sign players from Ajax, just look at their history. They have delivered many, many players to the top clubs in the world. It’s a long list."

But as much as the manager wants to call it a coincidence, the numbers are hard to ignore. Of the 20 players Ten Hag has signed, either on loan or permanently, five of them played for him at Ajax. The number is six if you include Sofyan Amrabat, who played for him at Utrecht. Four (including De Ligt) are Dutch, while a total of 10 have played in the Eredivisie.

Dutch football has produced some of the greatest players of the game, past and present, and Ajax are its best exponent. The squad that reached the semi-finals of the Champions League in 2019 under Ten Hag was packed with talent and Europe’s top clubs quickly came calling for most of its players.

De Jong joined Barca that very summer, De Ligt moved to Juventus. One year later Donny van de Beek joined United and Hakim Ziyech went to Chelsea. Still, Ten Hag’s leaning on Ajax players feels disproportionate. One or two signings of former players would make sense, but five?

The club have spent around £250 million ($319m) just on players from the Amsterdam club, plus a further £8.5m ($10m) on the one-season loan fee for Amrabat. So a considerable proportion of the £570m ($728m) United have spent under Ten Hag has been on players he has worked with.

De Ligt and Mazraoui could prove to be good additions, and the transfer fees are more than reasonable. And yet there are question marks about both of them. De Ligt had a difficult spell at Juventus, especially considering he cost the club €85m (£72m/$92m).

In his first season he made a number of individual mistakes and briefly lost his place to Merih Demiral until the Turkish defender’s campaign was ended by injury. Juve won the title but in his second and third season, they finished fourth. The Old Lady eventually decided to take a hit on their investment and sold De Ligt to Bayern Munich for €67m (£56m/$73m) in 2022.

De Ligt was a regular in his first season in Bavaria and won a third career title thanks to Borussia Dortmund's incredible bottle job in 2023. But Bayern wanted to bolster their defence that summer and did so by signing Kim Min-jae.

They strengthened again in January this year by signing Eric Dier, and ultimately De Ligt started less than half of Bayern's matches in all competitions, also struggling with injuries. And Bayern, like Juve before them, swallowed a substantial loss in order to get rid of him.

Mazraoui, meanwhile, has a concerning injury record. He had 10 separate periods of absence in two years at Bayern, including missing two months at the start of 2023 after inflammation around the heart following complications from Covid-19. He started only 26 Bundesliga games out of a possible 68, coming on as a substitute in a further eight. Given United suffered more injuries than any other team in the Premier League last season, that is cause for concern.

Only time will tell if they prove to be good moves. But we can already pass judgement on the other Ajax players Ten Hag has signed. Lisandro Martinez is the only player who has been an all-round success since swapping Amsterdam for Manchester to link up with the manager.

The Argentine is United’s best defender, if not their most important player of all. He has the best pass completion rate in the team and his personality is equally important. During his absence for most of last season, Ten Hag’s coaching staff said there was a glaring lack of vocal voices in the team.

It is no coincidence that United lost so many games in that period and that when he returned just in time for the FA Cup final, they staged their best performance of the season and became the first team in almost six months to beat Manchester City.

But Martinez is the exception that appears to prove the rule. Onana had a highly eventful first season in the team, making a series of clangers in the Champions League which led to United’s untimely elimination. He improved as the campaign went on, but many fans struggle to see the Cameroonian as an upgrade on David de Gea.

Then there is Antony, who cost a staggering £86m ($110m) and yet has contributed to only eight Premier League goals. Last season he scored one and got one assist. The Brazilian has demonstrated embarrassing antics on the pitch, and that’s before we get to the concerning accusations off it.

There is a strong argument that he is the worst Premier League signing of all time. Ten Hag pushed hard for United to sign him, and Ajax’s then chief executive Edwin van der Sar admitted that Ajax made the club pay well over the asking price.

Some advocates of Ten Hag defended his signings as he had a largely incompetent sporting director working on his behalf in John Murtough. "He has made a mistake, he bought many players for a lot of money, who did not perform well," said legendary Dutch striker Marco van Basten. "That is the job of a technical director, he took on too much."

That should have changed this summer when the club overhauled its non-executive staff and hired what INEOS' Sir Dave Brailsford and Sir Jim Ratcliffe described as "best-in-class" personnel. But despite the arrival of Dan Ashworth, Jason Wilcox and Omar Berrada, Ten Hag still seems to be calling the shots in the transfer market.

"Whether you are a manager or you are a sporting director, you tend to have a certain network and that’s just how it goes, but after it's a matter of whether or not the player will perform for United," said former Red Devils defender Mikael Silvestre last week.

"There were some good ones and some that didn't work out so far, like Antony. Lisandro Martinez on the other side is the one that when he doesn’t play, you feel it. So I think now we have the new staff around the manager at the recruitment level and technical decision makers that should help the manager to make the right call."

The signings of De Ligt and Mazraoui, however, look very much like deals Ten Hag pushed for rather than the work of Ashworth and Wilcox.

The manager, of course, has not got exactly the players he wanted. He was desperate to sign De Jong and was very keen to get Harry Kane last summer before being overruled by his colleagues due to the England captain’s high price, wages and scant sell-on value. But he has mostly recruited on his terms, so he better start delivering.

Ten Hag was fortunate to keep his job over the summer after leading United to their lowest-ever Premier League finish and an early exit from the Champions League. His saving grace was the FA Cup win over City, ending a second-successive season with a trophy win after a six-year silverware drought.

But, as Silvestre has warned, he needs to do more than win domestic cups if he is to stay in the job long-term. He needs to turn United back into title challengers and make them a real force to be reckoned with alongside City, Liverpool and Arsenal.

Ten Hag appears to have concluded that the best way to do that is with former Ajax players. Now he has to make his team click, or he will not see out his third season.