Football Season Guide

Mouscron were lucky enough to stay up last campaign courtesy of a strong run early in the season when they earned some surprise good results and managed to get enough of a points tally. Yet it was clear that the squad was overachieving and resets were unlikely to hold for too long. Indeed, Mircea Rednic's side stumbled badly from the midway point of the regular season and were just fortunate that teams like Eupen and Mechelen could not quite summon enough points to overtake them in the closing stages. Frank Dafys took over from Rednic at the end of the regular season after that disappointing run of results and he has hardly overseen much of an improvement. Yet he remains in charge at the start of this campaign and will be hoping that a good pre-season would set things up nicely for his men. However, just as in recent seasons, Mouscron look primed for struggle and their squad looks far too unstable and disjointed to expect any real progress. Having lost some strong on-loan players like Taiwo Owoniyi, Jonathan Bolingi and Omar Govea in the summer, the squad looks really shallow and the new signings have not been ones to inspire too much confidence and optimism. The recruitment has been focused mostly on Serbian players of little experience or discernible quality and only Saint-Etienne left-back Alexandros Katranis seems like a more interesting or promising capture so far. The one position where the manager has some excellent options is on goal as the experienced pair of Logan Bailly and Olivier Werner have been battling it out last season and the promising Jean Butez has been retained as well. It is certain that the Mouscron squad will undergo further strengthening over the course of the transfer window but for now the Reds look well below the level required in terms of depth and experience and look like major relegation candidates.