Five-star Ajax join PSV at summit
Ajax moved level on points with Eredivisie leaders PSV Eindhoven with a 5-2 win over NAC Breda on a wildly high-scoring day in Holland.
Saturday's five games yielded a combined 30 goals, seven of them at the Rat Verlegh Stadion as Frank de Boer's side emerged triumphant.
They surged into a 3-0 half-time lead, Ricardo van Rhijn's opener the prelude to two goals from Kolbeinn Sigthorsson.
Stipe Perica twice cut the deficit to two but further goals from Joel Veltman and Sigthorsson, the Iceland forward completing his hat-trick, saw Ajax home.
PSV have the chance to respond against Heerenveen on Sunday but any slip-up will leave not only Ajax but also surprise package PEC Zwolle right there with them.
Zwolle won 4-2 at home to Heracles, who had Mark Engberink sent off with 10 minutes remaining in an incident that was to prove crucial.
It was 2-2 at the time, Zwolle twice leading through Mustafa Saymak's goal and Tomas Necid's penalty but Heracles hitting back through Thomas Bruns and Oussama Tannane.
Engberink's dismissal tipped the game Zwolle's way, though, with Stefan Nijland and Jesper Drost exacting maximum punishment.
Ajax's win, remarkably, was not even the highest-scoring game of the day as Vitesse won 6-2 at Dordrecht with a hat-trick from Valeri Qazaishvili.
Abiola Dauda and Denys Oliynyk scored in the opening 20 minutes and three goals in 10 minutes, Qazaishvili scoring either side of a goal from Wallace, took Vitesse out of sight before Dordrecht finally got on the board.
Jeffry Fortes and Ryan Koolwijk cut the deficit to 5-2 but Qazaishvili appropriately had the final say, completing his treble in the last minute.
Feyenoord won 4-0 away to Go Ahead Eagles, Giliano Wijnaldum's own goal added to by Jens Toornstra, Colin Kazim-Richards and Mitchell te Vrede.
AZ overcame ADO den Haag 3-2 in the day's other game.
Michiel Kramer gave ADO a 42nd-minute lead but AZ were level by half-time thanks to Simon Poulsen. Aron Johannsson and Nemanja Gudelj then gave them victory, despite Roland Alberg pulling one back for the hosts with five minutes to go.