Manchester United look set to import a couple of players from Holland this summer. Buying from Eredivisie hasn’t always worked out for the Red Devils. Here’s how we’ve ranked the eight previous purchases from the Dutch league…
8) Memphis Depay
The winger certainly didn’t lack the confidence to be a success at Old Trafford. What we saw before and what he’s shown since suggests he didn’t want for talent either. But there’s no dressing it up: Depay was absolutely awful for United.
Playing for another Dutchman, Louis van Gaal, didn’t help his cause. After signing for £25million from PSV, Depay had one hugely underwhelming season before Jose Mourinho took over and didn’t fancy him either and packed him off to Lyon.
“Sometimes they can go too early to the biggest clubs where they are not ready to cope with it,” Mourinho explained of Depay. “Where they are not ready to understand that in the biggest clubs there are internal competition, that you can not play all the time. That there are fantastic players to fight with you for a position. They can lose a little sense of reality and become a bit childish. Which is what happened.”
Wayne Rooney would agree with that assessment.
7) Alex Buttner
One of those strange signings when Sir Alex Ferguson was going through his ‘value’ phase…
Buttner arrived from Vitesse as their Player of the Season in 2012 to fight with Patrice Evra for the left-back spot, or at least provide some back-up for it. He started well. On his Premier League debut, he scored one and set up another in a man-of-the-match performance against Wigan.
But Evra wasn’t shifting and Buttner was sent on his way two years after arriving, sticking the knife in as he went to Dynamo Moscow. “I want to play in the Champions League and win trophies,” he said after leaving United in sixth. Which is topical.
6) Donny van de Beek
Donny is spared the lowest ranking on this list since he’s still on the books so it could get better for him at United. It really can’t get any worse.
Oh, they’re signing Christian Eriksen you say? So Van de Beek is no longer even the first understudy to Bruno Fernandes. With Eriksen, Fernandes and possibly Frenkie De Jong, even Erik ten Hag will struggle to find a use for a player who ticks the all-important ‘Dutch’ and ‘Ajax pedigree’ boxes.
So it might get better for poor Donny. But it almost certainly won’t.
5) Raimond van der Gouw
Raimundus Johannes Hendrikus van der…
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