AJAX sporting director Gerry Hamstra has slammed Manchester United for their timing of the £133million double swoop for Lisandro Martinez and Antony.
Antony’s £85.5m deadline day transfer, in particular, rubbed the Dutch champions the wrong way.
The departures of the two South American stars left new boss Alfred Schreuder short and with voids to fill.
Hamstra told De Telegraaf: “Manchester United’s timing was so bad.
“The last few days [of the window] became even more hectic after Ajax had already gone through a major rebuild of the squad following the departure of lots of top-class players.
“‘It was so difficult to leave our manager with such a void. We all think we lost too many first-team players who always start.
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“We had a summer with totally different expectations.
“We wanted to keep the group together as much as possible to be able to perform well in the Champions League and to carry on being successful.
“That’s what we talked about with Alfred. Of course we knew there were a few snags.
“But no one had foreseen that our players would be bought for such huge sums of money.”
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Details of how Martinez and Antony pushed for moves away from Ajax have been revealed.
It is claimed Argentina international Martinez unleashed an X-rated rant at sporting director Hamstra.
The defender is believed to have branded Hamstra a “f**king nobody”.
And Antony kicked up a fuss and was absent from training.
Ajax also lost Andre Onana, Nicolas Tagliafico, Noussair Mazraoui, Sebastien Haller and Ryan Gravenberch during the transfer window.
And it didn’t help when Ajax failed to re-sign Chelsea’s Hakim Ziyech.
They instead had to settle for ex-Sevilla ace Lucas Ocampos.
Source: Soccer - thesun.co.uk
