Football Season Guide

Lucky to survive last season. Finished a single point above the bottom 3 and didn’t know until the final day of the campaign if they will stay in the top flight. Changed managers in February and this helped them. Portuguese Paulo Sergio took over at that stage and 3 vital wins against teams that got relegated ended up being just about enough. Parted ways with 5 of their high-profile foreign players this summer. Replaced 4 of those already with all of Portugal, Gunter, Gul and Kramer expected to be regular starters. None of them hugely exciting new signing though. Kramer hasn’t been a prolific goalscorer in his career so far, so not likely he will change that now. Bassogog will try to give him some help but the Cameroonian rarely scores goals himself. In midfield, 36-year-old Petros was one of the main reasons for the survival last term. He is still an option but with his age advancing Gul and Pedroza will need to have much more impact if Al Okhdod are to stay above the bottom 3. Outside of the new centre-back Gunter the rest of the defensive weapons are all local Saudi players. Al-Saeed and Asiri showed promise last season but they also missed time injured. Coach Sergio was already criticised last spring for his hard training practices when several players sustained muscle strains. The reports from training camp hinted of a similar problem, so if Sergio is not careful he could lose his job simply because he is overworking his players too much.