Post-game reactions are by Hugo Siquet, Maxim De Cuyper and coach Nicky Hayen.
Hugo Siquet: "Not the pressure we wanted to bring"
After a disappointing match, Hugo Siquet responded soberly: "We didn't bring the pressure and aggressiveness today that we wanted to bring to the pitch. It is certainly not a lack of automatisms, but the speed of execution and intensity needs to be higher. For me personally, it's a new environment, a new system, but I'm working as hard as I can at training to integrate as quickly as possible. It was my first starting place today and I focused on my game, not the circumstances." (KV)
Maxim De Cuyper: "Just not good enough today"
A 1-0 defeat for Blue & Black at Standard, and a bad start to the season. In his brief analysis afterwards, substitute Maxim De Cuyper did not beat about the bush: "You can indeed say that Club played a bit of an unrecognizable game. I think we played with too little depth in the first half, something we tried to rectify after the break in order to create more chances, but it made little difference. We all know that Club always struggles at Standard, but starting with one in six was obviously not what we had in mind to start the new season. Today was just not good enough." (FDC)
Nicky Hayen: "Just not enough at the moment"
Nicky Hayen: "I'm not satisfied with my team's performance. If you see with what abandon Standard defended that 1-0 and tried to block every cross, we didn't match that today. We had a lot of ball possession, but also did far too little with it. We still fail to make the pace and impose our will."
"However, the intensity at training last week was high. We miss a piece of responsibility in the group. If you see which 'killer passes' we can give at training and which lines we can break open under high pressure, it's a shame we can't do that in the game. Those spaces were also there today if you play it round quickly. Then if you don't play that vertical ball in and play too slow around the block, they can make up for that. It's just not enough at the moment."
"We swallowed an easy goal in the second half. Again, it comes down to drive, intensity and the will not to concede. We are going to analyze this match very extensively and present it to the players. That 1-on-6 is very sour and painful and we definitely wanted to avoid that. We have to flip that switch again and work towards next week," a disappointed Club coach concluded. (TM)