Football Season Guide

Emmen remain stuck in the purgatory of mediocrity in the second division after another rather poor campaign last year for the Drenthe outfit in which they never found the needed consistency to push on and challenge the top teams in the league amidst a fumbled transfer campaign in which they brought in a bunch of players from Germany along with a new coach and it never really messed the right way. The team did get better and more effective late in the season after a managerial change but Alfons Arts could not quite inspire them to break into the top eighth and a painful loss to Telstar on the last day of the season meant that they missed out completely on the play-offs. Now the time comes for another big reset as a host of players have been allowed to leave and some new signings have been made, once again completely changing the whole outlook of the squad. Meno van Dam has been appointed as a new coach and he does not exactly come with a ringing endorsement from his last job, getting a good Danish side like Aalborg relegated last season after getting just four wins all season. Yet Van Dam does have reputation for being a good coach with youth sides before and may well click nicely with the current group of players. Their big signing of the summer so far is the loan acquisition of Romano Postmen from Groningen and he does have the quality and presence to become a really effective player up front, something that Emmen dearly missed last season given that their main striker last season was Franck Evina and he managed just eight goals. The other new additions are mostly long shots on youngsters who are unlikely to really work out and generally there is just not enough quality and pedigree in this group right now to see them challenging even for a higher play-off spot.