The thing is I do think there are some valid excuses like he didn’t get any of the players he asked for and the whole ‘build a squad while the competition is already on its way’ thing.
Berghuis and Maduro ‘backstabbing’ probably came after those two concluded that he’s not good enough for ajax. I think that part is bs.
But it wasn’t made easy for Steijn, that much is obvious as well.
The players that he wanted, baring Olij, would all have asked for above/significantly above the now salary cap that the board had placed on Mislintat.
And it was known for a long time that we had to sell before bringing anyone in, with Mislintat only getting the go ahead after the first part of the Timber money being officially on the bank balance.
So, sure it wasn’t easy for Steijn, but that was because the board was being difficult, not Mislintat.
Oh yes agreed it wasn’t just Mislintat. The board made a gigantic mistake with this half baked investing in the squad. We could’ve had Ziyech and Tagliafico, but we got forbs (nothing against him but he has some stuff to learn) Avila and Sosa. Etc.
Really they could have simply bought less players that cost more instead of so many. Sutalo, vd boomen, Tagliafico, Ziyech, Dest, Maybe go for zerrouki because we needed a dm?
The rest we didn’t really 100 percent need! This is also made evident by who’s playing now. It’s really a lot of players we already had and the new guys are playing only if the spot was really vacant like Sutalo and forbs or if someone is injured.
So the board made a huge gigantic mistake there with the caps. A cheap buy can be an expensive buy!
Eh, Ziyech has been constantly injured for Gala; and while Tagliafico would probably have been a solid addition, he is on more than both of Sosa and Avila combined afaik.
Don’t know about that, if I’m completely honest, yes there were some signings that felt like they were being bought to fill up the squad, and it would have been preferable to have done that with youth players, Ajax did lose a lot of players this summer.
Let’s not forget that Mikautadze has yet to be played as a striker, Mannsverk has only featured in one game due to Injury, the only time Akpom has started was at Right wing and Ramaj hasn’t played because Steijn was angry at not getting Olij.
While I do agree that sometimes a cheap buy can become an expensive one, the only ones that threaten to go that way, are players who Steijn hasn’t really given a chance.
I agree it’s a legitimate excuse. It did sound like Steijn actually had a much better idea what the squad needed than that surf fraud.
At the same time you can’t go and throw all those signings under the bus literally the first game things go wrong. How are you supposed to build a cohesive squad that way?
He also chose to play those guys out of position immediately when he easily could have waited to integrate them if they weren’t ready. He definitely started making excuses for his dismissal from the start.
