Football Season Guide

Gwangju FC

In


Tae-jun Park mid (Seongnam) Ji-yong Jung att (Ansan) Jin-ho Kim def (Gangwon)Jun-soo Bae def (Daejeon) Gabriel att (Canelos 2010) Joao Magno att (Goias) Kyoung-rok Choi mid (free agent)Popovic def (Adelaide)

Out


Aaron Calver sp def (Daejeon) Soon-min Lee k, mid (Daejeon) Timo Letschert def, k, (Chengdu) Tomas Bedinelli, r, att (Chapecoense) Yeong-jae Ju att (released)

Their highest ever finish in the league and qualification for the Asian Champions League was beyond all expectations. As the newly promoted team and playing a brand of modern football that was unique to the league - they took the league by storm. The highly-rated manager signed a new contract in what is probably their best business in the off-season. Losing Soon-min Lee in the midfield is a loss but Kyoung-rok Choi could be a good replacement. Same goes for Letschert and Popovic at centre back. The ambitious manager will look for an even higher finish despite budget constraints. The adding of goals will be key to that with new Brazilian duo Magno and Gabriel unknown quantities to the league. They deserved their third placed finish last year but difficult to follow up. Manager has the team tactically set up to exploit space and possess the football preventing their opponents from scoring. It worked a treat last season and the players will be well drilled this season. Ho-yeon Jung in midfield development has been key and now has a new midfield partner. New signings adapting will always be key, in particular their new foreign players. Asani also returned late to preseason so getting all these guys up to speed will key to adding goals to the team, which was their weakness last season. Balancing the league and continental football will be tough.

Target


Top half finish will be expected but hard to improve on last season.