Pickard: Club Brugge — Season 2 (January to March)

Hey everyone!

Welcome back to another update on my second season with Club Brugge. In the last post we saw an alarming dip in form, as we crashed out of Europe and also saw our six point lead turn to three points behind. Could we improve? Let’s find out…

Transfers

First of all we’ll start with the transfers, after the recent form I decided that a couple of in’s and out’s we’re needed. Macbeth Sibaya left on a free after he wasn’t up to the task and Juanito and Sven D’Hoest went on loan. Now the sales, Vadis Odjidja had been moaning about wanting a move to a bigger club and had upset a lot of people, so when Roma offered 5m…I snapped there hands off. It was the same with Wilfried Dalmat, he too was causing problems but this time it was because he wanted more first team football…he was injured though lol…so 2.7m from Getafe was more than enough. Finally, Ivan Perisic who I did like, but had fallen down the pecking order since Cani and Eric had joined and 1.3m was a good deal (I think) for him. Now on to the buys…

Dede

I felt we were conceding too many goals with Donk and Koefkens at the back, so in he came. This chap has good acceleration and awesome pace and strength as well as good tackling. Yes 11m was expensive but he’ll be a beast in the Pro League.

Cedric Bakambu

Brought in as backup due to the injuries to Lerato Chabangu and Dorge Kouemaha, I’ve seen what this kid can do in the Premier League on other saves and I thought the Pro League is no Premier League…he should be able to do a job in Belgium. I know it says he’s at Wigan but I forgot to take a screenshot whilst he was with us…ooops! 

January

Our first game of the January came against AA Gent, a difficult side to kick-off the New Year against but I was hoping for a win. We went in at half-time 0-0, we had more possession and a few more shots. AA Gent managed to get a goal early on in the second half and also held out for a 1-0 win. Not the result I wanted.

Next up was the Brugge derby, we’d drawn with Cercle earlier on in the season and I wanted a win. Telling the players ‘I expect a win’ seemed to do the trick lol, Hoa Junmin scored 5 minutes from half-time to give us the advantage. Cercle Brugge never really tested us all match and Cedric Bakambu sealed our victory 10 minutes from time. 2-0 the final score.

After the victory against Cercle Brugge came Zulte Waregem. They were floating near the bottom of the league and didn’t expect them to cause us too many problems…ooooh I was sooo wrong… we were 2-0 down at half-time. I shouted ‘I expect a win’ at them but this time it didn’t work Zulte Waregem were on it and ran out 4-0 winners. I was so disappointed.

Due to the performance of a few players I made numerous changes for our next match, Lierse. I had to rush Dorge Kouemaha back for injury because Bakambu picked up an injury (caused by a nasty challenge from my captain in training), but that didn’t stop him from getting a goal in the first 8 minutes which, turned out to be the only goal in the match. 1-0 win to us, January done.

February

Feburary started with an away trip to Germinal Beerschot. We made a good start to the match and found ourselves 1-0 up at half-time, Bart Goor with an own goal. Katlego, back for International duty replaced Dorge Kouemaha in the second half and marked his return with a goal and our second. It was quite an even match looking back, but we made our chances pay.

Charleroi at home was next for us and again I was expecting a comfortable win against poor opponents, but I underestimated them and they scored 20 minutes in and that was enough for them to win 1-0.

We then travelled to KV Mechelen, needing a win after a poor showing against Charleroi, I told the player ‘you can win today’ and we raced to a 2-0 lead after 30 minutes, goals coming from Bakambu and a penalty from Geraerts. KV Mechelen scored on 38 minutes but we led at half-time 2-1. KV Mechelen dominated the second half and missed various chances to equalise, I thought we’d held on to all three points but in the 93rd minute KV Mechelen equalised through an offside goal…I felt like crying. 2-2 final score.

Our last match of February was against 5th place STVV, this was a tricky match because I didn’t know which Club Brugge team would turn up. We’d beaten them 6-3 earlier in the league but then got destroyed 5-0 in the cup, were we going to get the same hiding??? No it finished 0-0.

March

This was it our final match of the Pro League season, after this it was Playoff time. Tournai were our opponents and they had already finished bottom of the table managing only 4 wins (1 against us lol). We started off the better side a raced to a 2-0 lead at half-time both goals coming from Nabil Dirar. Tournai gave me a little scare when they pulled one goal back on 66 minutes but Lerato Chabangu, Dede and Maxime Lestienne gave us a comprehensive victory. 5-1 the score.

So that was that the Pro League season finished…where had we come?

3rd…we’d dropped another place in the table and we’d finished 7 points behind Genk (grrrrrrr), nevermind though, we’d qualified for the playoffs again and with them starting with the final Pro League points halved… this was the playoff starting positons/points.

3 points behind Genk (grrrrrrrr), that’s not too bad. Could we win the title again…all will be revealed in the next post!

Thanks for reading and I look forward to your comments :)

Regards

Martin