Frank de Boer: 90 percent of the team is still present

Frank de Boer: 90 percent of the team is still present

09/08/2014

Frank de Boer recently made the remark in an interview that he thought that 90 percent of the Ajax tean of last season was still present. Always interesting to validate such assumptions based on available statistics. It could have been the case that Frank de Boer had a certain squad in mind and that 10 out of the 11 players were still present, but that is difficult to validate, but there are 3 other ways we can look at it quite easily, namely from the players that were used in the previous season, how many are still under contract at Ajax after the transfer window. And which percentage of played matches and played minutes from the previous season were played by players still under contract. We only looked at official matches for these statistics.

We have these statistics in below table for the present and previous 4 seasons to give an idea of the change from season to season:

Season Used Players Played Matches Played Minutes
2014-15 69.2 70.1 72.2
2013-14 67.7 69.2 70.9
2012-13 71.4 57.5 59.2
2011-12 59.4 71.6 73.1
2010-11 77.1 80.0 84.4


Very likely Frank de Boer had something else in mind, but if we look at the minutes played (and we think this is the best comparison method to see how much of the team of the previous season has moved on), we don't come close to the 90 percent. Closest we got was in the last season Martin Jol started, 2010-11, when from the players that left only Marko Pantelic and Dennis Rommedahl had played a fair amount of minutes. In the other seasons, except for 2012-13, the percentage is quite similar, low 70. In 2012-13 this was significantly higher when next to a number of substitute players also Anita, Janssen, Vertonghen and Van der Wiel left. If we look at the player percentage as well, we can conclude that that season relatively experienced players left. In the season 2011-12 it is the opposite, many players left, but relatively little experience. This is because Ajax parted ways with players like Bonevacia, Castillion, Cvitanich, Jozefzoon, Mido, Oleguer, Tainio and Zeegelaar, who did not play a lot.
Back to season 2014-15. Possibly De Boer underestimated that Siem de Jong (28 matches, 2011 minutes), Christian Poulsen (43, 2300), Bojan Krkic (32, 1911) and Kenneth Vermeer (16, 1426) still played quite a lot last season, and that we lost more experience than just Daley Blind (43, 2300). From the 11 players that played most minuted last season Ajax only lost Blind and Poulsen, but from the next 8 players on the list, Ajax lost 5. Besides the ones already named above, also Danny Hoesen and Lesley de Sa left.
However, considering the percentages Ajax has nothing to worry about, as with similar changes Frank de Boer was able to form a winning team in the past seasons.
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