Football Season Guide

For well over a decade, Helmond Sport have been incapable of fighting for the Eerste Divisie top spots but what happened last season is an omen for even bleaker times ahead. In fact, they did decently – alternating wins and defeats but surviving in the top 10 – until early November and then started a long and unstoppable fall, which brought them only 4 points above the relegation zone, come the end of the campaign. They won only 3 out of the last 21 games played and threw away tons of points from vantage situations. The fact that they held the second-worst attack of the league, with 42 goals scored, did not really help. Strangely enough, their top scorer, Lukowicz regularly played and delivered until mid-January but then lost his starting status out of the blue. However, the main issue was the huge financial crisis the club suddenly went through. So huge that there were times when players did not even know where or if they could train at all. Coach Seegers did not know how to deal with the ongoing situation and logically decided to quit with 37-year-old Frédéric Frans taking over after a season at Jong KV Mechelen. Quite expectedly, the transfer campaign was initially characterized by the departure of the most experienced players with a few youngsters arriving as their replacements. The attack in particularly was literally dismantled with starters Leipold, Daneels and Lukowicz all gone. Bajrami is going to play a more relevant role while Cicero and Ekoli are all no entities at this level. The defence is currently short-manned since they lost a protagonist in centre-back Vos, returned to his parent club but not replaced, and also saw the departure of 3 full-backs, Absalem, Ogenia and Semic, with only one arriving, Boulahrouz. The midfield is the sole area where they seem to have duly acted with starting Makanza gone and replaced by Huiberts, returning to the Netherlands after tasting Italian football.