I went to see Jordan Henderson and what he should have done after Liverpool is clearer than ever

Ajax just feels a lot more appropriate as a club for a player like Jordan Henderson. Whether he is ready to admit it yet or not, leaving Liverpool for the Saudi Pro League was a colossal error.

"I strongly believe that me playing in Saudi Arabia is a positive thing," he said when trying to justify the Al Ettifaq move to The Athletic last year. "We can all bury our heads in the sand and criticize different cultures and different countries from afar. But then nothing’s going to happen. Nothing’s going to change."

In the Netherlands, though, he really is changing the club and the culture — albeit not in the way that he was claiming to be in the Middle East.

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Henderson’s performances have earned him plenty of praise over recent weeks, with former Netherlands international Arie Haan including him in another Team of the Week for the newspaper De Telegraaf.

"He arranged everything (against the likes of Feyenoord and PSV)," Haan said. "He’s now really doing what Ajax got him to do in the winter. Organize, run free, move the game at pace, help fellow players. He was on top of everything. That is not to be missed."

A couple of weeks back, Liverpool.com was in attendance as Ajax won 5-0 in the Europa League against Maccabi Tel Aviv. The 34-year-old came on with his team already 5-0 up, rotated for this game with Ajax sitting in second spot in the Europa League and sailing towards the knockout phase.

He has made 10 appearances in the Eredivisie this season, six of those being starts, for an average of 56 minutes in each, and has been carefully managed by Francesco Farioli. As an aging player who is growing in stature and influence, it makes sense.

Earlier in the season, Farioli disputed suggestions that he could sell Henderson and the Italian described the ex-Sunderland star as being an "exceptional" player. It is an opinion that is widely shared across the Ajax fanbase.

When Henderson arrived in January, he set a new record for shirt sales, Ajax said, with the ex-England international’s number six becoming Ajax's fastest-selling jersey in the club’s history. More were sold in a day than those of Dusan Tadic and Daley Blind in a week and that is despite his shirt being sold — with a name and number and the Europa League patches on the sleeves — for the not-insubstantial sum of just over $140 (£109/€132).

Henderson spoke recently about potentially retiring at Ajax and it is impossible not to imagine how different his reputation in England — particularly in Liverpool — would be had he moved directly to the Netherlands rather than via Saudi Arabia. "When my contract here expires, I will be 36 years old," he told Ajax Life. "Then I will see how I am physically and what Ajax wants. I may end my career here."

His influence on the field is clear: there was a huge cheer when he slid in to prevent a promising counter-attack for Maccabi Tel Aviv, even with the victory long since wrapped up. Every Ajax fan Liverpool.com spoke to around the Johan Cruyff Arena appeared surprised at the question of whether the move had paid off. Resoundingly, the answer was yes.

And while this is not the Ajax team of a few years ago — with Frenkie de Jong, Matthijs de Ligt, Hakim Ziyech and the rest — there has been a general improvement this season. Ajax won 2-0 against Arne Slot's old side, Feyenoord, recently, and while it is seven points behind PSV in the league, it has a game in hand.

That is a remarkable increase, regardless, compared to last season’s struggles. At one stage, it looked like Ajax was plummeting toward relegation as it embarked on a similar campaign to Jurgen Klopp's final one at Borussia Dortmund. At the halfway point, the signing of Henderson was designed in part to turn it around.

With 31 games under his belt to date, Henderson is some way off having his picture added to a collage deep inside the bowels of the Johan Cruyff Arena exclusively for those who have made a century appearances for Ajax — a wall that includes Ryan Gravenberch, former Liverpool winger Ryan Babel, and current Reds coach John Heitinga.

But he has another 18 months left to run on his current deal. The overwhelming majority of Ajax fans believe that his influence is really starting to show.

Henderson’s face is plastered everywhere you look. Between the main entrance and the media room at Ajax’s home stadium, his picture could be spotted three times. He was pictured at least twice on the short walk from the train station to the ground in various advertisements, and appears more than 10 times inside the relatively small official Ajax shop.

When he arrived in the Eredivisie, there was huge excitement that Henderson could be the exact kind of player who could transform the team and take back to its former glory. Now, it seems the move might be paying off for both parties.