We have seen some surprising results at the start of the Belgian Pro League: the low scoring opening gameday, Westerlo at the top of the league with an exciting first two games, the champion of last season Club Brugge with only 1 out of 6 points and the return of Beerschot and Dender to the first division.
New Westerlo coach Timmy Simons is pushing the (physical) limits
KVC Westerlo had a great start of the season, they lead the ranking with 6 out of 6 points and have the most goals scored with 7 goals in two games. They struggled a lot last season, but with new coach Timmy Simons you already see a lot of positive changes.
- Their intensity is a lot higher this season, they made 2.6 km sprinting distance meters and 134 sprints a game, leading also these rankings in the Belgian Pro League.
- This is a lot higher then their averages of last season, 1.6 km sprinting distance / game and 102 sprints per game. It would be interesting to see if they can keep this high tempo.
- Transitions and set pieces.
- Linked to their intensity is their goals scored and chances created on transitions. They created 13 chances directly on a transition and scored 3 goals on these 13 chances.
- Scoring two goals on a 10 corners is a great conversion rate. Aiming for the centre area consistently resulted in 3 chances and 2 goals.
Club Brugge lacks conversion
On the other side of the table, we surprisingly find Club Brugge with 1 out of 6 points. It seems they are having some trouble into fitting their new players into the team, because they lack conversion, while the opponent’s are extremely efficient against them.
- Club Brugge leads the ranking in amount of shots (22 per game), second in the amount of successful final third passes (88.5 per game) and are second in the least amount of shots against (7 per game). Yet they started the season with only 1 point out of 2 games.
- They have the lowest goal / shot conversion rate of the league
- They have the second lowest xGA
New clubs Dender & Beerschot bring intensity
The two new teams in the Belgian Pro League are Dender and Beerschot. They both jump out in one physical attribute, that is quite spectacular.
- Dender is doing an extremely good job on transitions and this is the result of their forward mindset in transition. With MyGamePlan we can measure if and when a player makes a deep run after the team recovers the ball. With Dender this is 22%!!! to give a reference last season, the average in the Big 5 leagues was 8%
With Beerschot it’s the intensity and runs of their attacking players that grab our attention, there are 3 players in the top 5 of deep runs in the whole league coming from Beerschot
- Verlinden (33)
- Keita (33)
- Reyners (28)
