Cercle flirted with danger all season for the second consecutive year and once again crucial improvement late in the campaign under new manager the only thing that saved Green and Blacks.
Squad looked impressive come the start of the season after some expensive high-profile players arrived from parent club Monaco. However, coach Clement never found a way to extract the best out of the likes of Marcelin, Kanoute and Musaba despite their price tags suggesting they were top class players. All 3 of them had very disappointing campaigns.
The first few months were OK despite the lack of consistency, mixed 6 wins with 6 defeats in the opening 12 rounds, but then between late November and mid-January single point was earned from 10 games and Cercle collapsed in serious trouble.
Discipline issues with Hazard, serious COVID outbreak right around the start of this run (mid-November) that affected 14-15 senior players + 7 consecutive defeats by single-goal margins all contributed to Clement being sacked in early February.
Just released from his job at Kortrijk Yves Vanderhaeghe was immediately appointed as replacement and under him Cercle’s results improved immediately (W4 D2 L2) with the main reason for that the newfound defensive stability – had 3 of their 5 league clean sheets in the last 8 rounds.
Survival was secured with game to spare in the end, but it wouldn’t have been possible without Ugbo’s goals. The young striker had breakthrough campaign and literally carried the team on his shoulders on more than one occasion.
COVID management needs to improve next term as Cercle had 3 outbreaks in the squad during this season and clearly all the issues that these brought impacted negatively many of the results.
