I’ve actually gone back and looked at Ajax under Ten Hag as well and the more I’ve watched the more the red flags are evident that what he was doing there wouldn’t translate well.
They’d play some breathtaking stuff, montage worthy at times, but a lot of what he set up relies on individual problem solving and a general technical superiority that his players had over almost everyone in that league. They also pretty consistently struggled defending transitions back then (sound familiar?) but it didn’t matter as much because they had brilliant players that could go score again.
It’s seemingly this hybrid of structured “principles” and off the cuff trust in players finding solutions within the game. That’s an incredibly difficult balance and style to play if you don’t have a huge advantage in overall talent. It’s why I think even if you gave us Madrids squad we wouldn’t be some unbeatable team. And add to that the fact that he clearly underestimated the physical jump in the PL and it’s been a disaster. It’s simply not really possible to play this setup where you are pressing high and going man to man with your two midfielders, and THEN also trying to counter at pace and playing hyper direct. With how fast the PL is already , even the best athletes in your squad will be dead tired in the final 30 minutes of the game. I also think it’s indicative of how many non contact muscular injuries we’ve seen in the past year+.
Again, this failure of his initial style wouldn’t completely be an issue if he’d have recognized that what he’s doing isnt going to work, but he didn’t. Instead he stupidly believed it was strictly personnel based and some rotten injury luck that had his sides getting battered by relegation level teams consistently. Even this year, the “improvement” was pretty much solely based on the high pressing success due to playing Mount (who when fit is one of the better pressing players in the world) while sacrificing attacking threat to do so. It was a gimmick of a solution that would never consistently see results, and even then we saw that the rest of the side STILL reverted into having to play a transitional basketball game in the final 20 minutes of both Fulham and Brighton.
A great manager would have adjusted his system and style to the new league and tweaked it to allow his players to flourish initially. But even a half decent manager would have realized a month or two into last season that what he’s built his “system” on is untenable and would drastically need to be adjusted and quickly (Van Gaal is a good example). Ten Hag did neither.