Lokeren looked like an unmitigated disaster of a team right from the first game, getting trounced at home by eventual champions Genk, all the way until the bitter end, and it was a logical conclusion that their season ended in relegation.
Well-liked and respected coach Peter Maes soon realised that the squad was not up to much, with particularly glaring lack of quality in attack and at full-backs, but the club persisted with him throughout the autumn, as the team gathered just five points from the opening 11 games.
He eventually left in November but the club managed to make an even worse appointment as his replacement in Norwegian Trond Sollied. He oversaw the rare home win but the team was just dire on the road and a few poor losses either side of the winter break left the Tricolores very much adrift at the bottom as rivals picked up in form.
He was sacked shortly and Glen de Boeck took over for the final seven games of the season, with the task of staying up looking pretty impossible already. He galvanised the team a bit and earned a good win against Antwerp but at the end it was too late and the worst team in the league finished some seven points off safety.
The team lacked cohesion and a settled starting 11 throughout and no one really emerges with credit, even if skipper and club icon Killian Overmeire managed to play almost every game after spending the previous two seasons almost constantly injured. The fact that the team's top scorers were two players on four goals speaks volumes about their complete attacking impotency throughout the campaign.
Face a tough rebuilding job next season but De Boeck has what it takes to get them up as long as the squad is revamped on a massive scale.
