The winter break will be over tomorrow in the Belgian Jupiler Pro League! The golden boot (best player of the calender year 2018) has been handed out to Vanaken (Club Brugge).

It is the second year in a row that a player from Club Brugge did get the Golden Boot. Last year the honor was for Vormer! If we compare these two, well the only conclusion can be that they can’t be compared.

Vormer is more the box-2-box players, the worker and motivator! While Vanaken is more the stylist! Did he deserve the Golden Boot? I do think that he deserved it, I am only surprised with the GAP with Pozuelo, 250 vs 119.

This indicates that if you do want to win the Golden Boot in Belgium, you need to win the title. Rarely the prize is won by a player who didn’t play with the Champion!

Winter Transfers

For the moment it is a rather quite winter transfer window in Belgium. Most team are trying to keep the ones on board and out of the hand of richer clubs from other countries.

Genk

In this aspect Genk did made a transfer without doing one! Pozuelo is the number 10 of Genk, the one who brings in the creativity, the captain! Well he did get an offer of a club in the middle east, one which was hard to refuse.

Pozuelo has an annual salary in Genk about €1.000.000. But in the middle east he could earn 3 times more per year! The transfer fee was no problem for them because he had a clause in his contract, which stipulated that a team outside of Belgium could buy him for €8.000.000!

Fortunately for the Genk fans he decided to stay! He refused the offer, which could have secured his financial independence for the remainder of his life and probably also for his kids! He decided that Genk now has more chance than ever to win the title and he does want to be part of the team that does! Pozuelo is extremely important in the football they are trying to bring. In the past year he was good for 8 goals and 24 assists! And a thank you, he will get a substantial salary raise and in return he agreed to drop the clause in the contract until the summer transfer window!

2 other incoming transfers, which are players for the future! Genk always tries to buy players in the winter transfer window, with the idea that these players will first be the back-up of the starters and that they should be ready for a starting spot next season, in some cases even next calendar year! I don’t know much about Neto Borges, which did came from Hammarby, but it appears to be a good addition to the team! Casper de Norre, a former youth player of Genk was bought at Sint Truiden. This is a great transfer in. He was one of the key players of Sint Truiden!

On the out coming side, Seck was loaned out to Zulte Waregem. While I do appreciate what Seck did for the team, it is better for Genk and him that he will be playing at another team. The youngsters behind him in the picking list, maybe even have more quality but are lacking experience. With the loan out of Seck, they will get more playing minutes!

Club Brugge

Club Brugge announced that they are not planning to do an incoming transfer during this transfer window! There biggest goal of the transfer window is to be able to keep the key players on board! According to the papers they did refuse an offer of €25.000.000 for they forward Wesley. The interest in Vanaken will also increase because he did win the golden boot! I do expect that he will at least stay until the summer. He has always announced that he only will sign at another club, if the other club contacts him first!

They finally did get ride off Leandro Pereira! He had a heavy contract and didn’t get any minutes anymore. They sold them to Matsumoto Yamaga!

Anderlecht

It is a though season from Anderlecht, the record champion in Belgium! They fired their head coach just before the winter break and did sign Rutten to do the job. They were planning to do a lot of incoming transfers but now have to wait what the new manager finds of the quality of the squad. This is lost time and will cost them some more money. How later in the transfer window you sign a player, the more expensive he becomes.

On the incoming side Kara came back early from his loan to Nantes. He didn’t get enough playing minutes there and had a big discussion with the coach! So welcome back Kara. He will add some more experience to the defense of Anderlecht. So a free incoming transfer on a place their certainly needed to improve the quality!

They also bought Peter Žulj from Sturm Graz. The papers are saying is that he was at the moment the best player in the Austrian league! I did read that his pace is not that fast but he will add the much needed creativity to the team!

Others

Gent did sell Kalinic to Aston Villa and bought Kaminski from KV Kortrijk. Well I do think that they won’t lose a lot of quality with this deal and they did earn a lot of money!

Maybe Zulte Waregem did have the best transfer window! Stef Peeters is loaned from Caen. Also here he will add some more creativity to the team and Seck is loaned from Genk! And they were able to buy Idrissa Syla from QPR for a bargain! While he maybe lack the qualities to had his breakthrough with QPR, he has more than enough quality for the Belgian Jupiler Pro League!

All of the above will of course have an impact on the remainder of the competition!

Predictions round 22:

These are the prediction from the Nyls for round 22!

My bets for today:

Good luck,
Peter