Matthijs de Ligt joined Man United because of Erik ten Hag - but is a perfect fit for Ruben Amorim

As Matthijs de Ligt sought a fresh start this summer, he was attracted by the idea of a reunion with the coach who gave him the platform to launch his career and made him captain of Ajax while still in his teens.

De Ligt looked like a world-beater when he left Amsterdam to join Juventus in 2019, but five years and two clubs later, the doubts were beginning to grow. To try and get back to the player he was at 17, 18 and 19, he got back together with Erik ten Hag, his coach for 70 games at Ajax.

They managed only a dozen more at Manchester United before Ten Hag paid the price for a prolonged spell of poor form, but it might just have been enough to get De Ligt back on the right track. After a shaky start and a nightmare international break with the Netherlands in September, the 25-year-old is beginning to look assured at Old Trafford.

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His partnership with Lisandro Martinez is starting to flourish, and he has started six of the last seven games. Only one of those has ended in defeat, and De Ligt's performances have gone under the radar, which is never a bad thing for a central defender, especially one whose confidence had taken such a battering just two months ago.

"I feel quite well. I think the last seven games I start to feel really into my rhythm, feeling important for the team, if you combine it with wins it’s really nice," De Ligt said after helping United to a clean sheet in the Premier League victory against Leicester City.

United's players had plenty of respect for Ten Hag, but few were as close to him as his former Ajax players, particularly De Ligt, whose career took over because of the faith of his former boss.

De Ligt opted to join United from Bayern Munich for £38m this summer partly because of the Ten Hag link, so he was particularly disappointed to see him get sacked after the 2-1 defeat to West Ham.

"It’s always quite difficult in general if a manager gets sacked," he said. "I have a really good relationship with Erik, I really like him a person as well as a human being. That way I felt the most bad for him, because I know what he does every day to get the team performing, so that’s quite difficult.

"In the end, you know what football is about, if the results are not there everybody needs to be questioned, the trainer, the players. In the end the trainer gets sacked, the players can stay, so we always have to look at ourselves, so I feel really bad for him. In the end you have to keep going, you can’t stay in the past, it’s over now with him."

It's over with Ten Hag, but it's only just beginning with Ruben Amorim. The 39-year-old arrived in Manchester today to take over as the club's new head coach. De Ligt has gone away with the Netherlands, and Amorim will only start work on the Carrington training pitches next week. He is set to bring his 3-4-3 system to Old Trafford and could play it for the first time at Ipswich on Sunday, November 24.

De Ligt could become a key cog in that system and he has plenty of experience of playing in a three-man defence, both at international level and club sides. For all that the numbers change, he insists the differences compared to a back four are actually small.

"I’ve played in back three for the national team, but also Juventus and Bayern. In the end like [against Leicester] we played in ball possession with a back three so let’s see what happens," he said.

"I think a back three or a back four, it’s in general the same, the only thing of importance is how the team is set up. You can play in a back three but if everything is not compact and everybody is doing their own job then it’s going to be really difficult, the same in a back four.

"That’s going to be the biggest challenge for the trainers, to get everyone on the same wavelength and same page to improve as a team and improve as players."

Amorim will now assess his squad before deciding who can fit into his system and who plays where, but De Ligt is confident it will succeed.

"I think the squad is capable of everything, back three, back four, as I said, the most important thing is how you play together, how you set up together," he said.

"Like [Sunday] for example, we play as a back four but in ball possession we play in a back three, so you have to get used to each other and if you play together it’s always easier."