It won’t be easy for Arouca fans to recover from what happened to the team in the final rounds of the season. Relegation after last season’s 5th place will certainly be hard to understand, especially when in the 20th round, Arouca was standing in a very comfortable 10th place, with almost twice as many points as 17th placed Tondela. However, since then until the end, Arouca only gathered 5 points: 11 defeats in the last 14 matches was the miserable ending of season that led Arouca to hit the bottom and was relegated to second division after 4 seasons amongst the top teams of the country.
Lito Vidigal continued as Arouca’s coach and, despite a shaky start (5 points in first 8 rounds), mostly due to the early start of the season, its Arouca playing Europa League’s qualifiers, and neglecting a bit on the proper preparation of the season, he managed to pulled the team together and got out of trouble zone by the time the season reached “half-time”. However, an invitation from Israel took Lito Vidigal from Arouca, who hired Manuel Machado to replace him. However, the experienced coach only lasted 5 rounds, having had nothing but defeats during that period. Jorge Leitão assumed first as interim and then as definite coach for the rest of the season. Some slightly positive results made the fans think the bad period would be over with new coach, but the team got back to a bad streak and ended the season in an awful final five rounds, having collected only one point in that period.
There were not many players having a positive season, at Arouca. Winger Jorginho was a hugely positive surprise, when he finally appeared on first team only in November, and had two amazing months, having scored 5 goals in just 10 appearances. His lightning emergence caught the attention of French side St. Etiènne, however, and Jorginho left the club in January. In the midfield, creative Artur had some good games, but was far too inconsistent to give Arouca the creativity they couldn’t find anywhere else in the squad. The best unit of the team – by far! – was once again the captain and versatile Nuno Coelho. First as midfielder, but mostly as centre-half, Nuno Coelho was always playing in another level, and will understandably be leaving the club in next season as he clearly belongs in a Top Flight team.
