Anderlecht’s awful financial situation meant that many youngsters from the Academy had to be moved to the senior squad. Things never looked right in the preparation for the new season and the expected turmoil reached its peak after just 2 rounds.
Frank Vercauteren was the coach, with club legend Kompany only his assistant and yet Anderlecht’s Board gave Kompany the freedom to decide the squad and to basically have final say on everything so after just 2 games Vercauteren resigned leaving Kompany to take charge officially.
With this his first ever job as head coach Kompany expectedly had some issues and he kept rotating the squad a lot all season, 34 different field players were used. The results were solid, but not impressive enough with Anderlecht struggling for goals and, due to that, for wins.
Despite only 3 defeats in the first 19 rounds, none on home turf, Anderlecht remained outside the top 6 as they had the highest number of draws in the entire league. Apart from Nmecha, nobody else was contributing much in attack and this remained trend until the end of the season with the German the only player in the squad to reach double figures in goals.
Kompany trusted lots of Academy players and also in the winter months he added several quality signings, both Ashimeru and Bruun Larsen becoming important pieces come play-off time.
Still Anderlecht looked to be way off the pace of the top 4, but in the end late spur of form saw them finishing the regular season with 4 consecutive wins and as result sneaking into Play-off I.
The good results ended there though with Anderlecht unable to win another match in the play-offs (D4 L2) and logically finishing last. Still the top 4 finish secured place in Europe and this was the goal at the start of the season.
Coach Kompany is expected to have to trust many Academy players again next season as the team’s financial situation only keeps deteriorating. Also it’s very likely that at least 2-3 players that could accumulate lots of money will be sold. Verschaeren and Lokonga already attracted hefty offers from top teams and another summer of many personnel changes seems to be guaranteed.
