Club Brugge suffered a heavy blow against AA Gent. Blauw-Zwart clashed with a very efficient home team and lost 6-1. Philippe Clement did not hide his disappointment afterwards.
"This is a heavy disappointment. I said some things in the locker room that I don't want to say here. We took unlikely counter goals today. Things we've never seen in the past two years. We did a lot of things wrong ourselves and shot ourselves in our own foot as a result. I have heard Hein Vanhaezebrouck say many times that Gent was not efficient, but today almost every chance was a goal. During the first half they came to our goal three times and also resulted in three goals, where we actually made three mistakes ourselves. That was not necessary. Something like that naturally gives a lot of oxygen to the opponent, who gets a lot of confidence as a result. Moreover, we also lost far too many duels in all zones of the pitch. That also made the difference today. After halftime we changed systems and started with good intentions, but their first chance went in again. We have to rectify this in the next weeks and months. Hopefully we can also take good lessons from it to respond in the next few months. Whether I regret our starting lineup today? I don't know if 1 or 2 other players would have made a big difference today. The guy who perhaps had the most doubts beforehand was Ignace Van der Brempt and he was perhaps our best player today."
"I deliberately didn't make any substitutions at the end either, because I didn't think anyone should escape from this match. There were more players who deserved to go off, including the routines. I expected them to pull themselves and the others along to a better level, but that didn't happen. I do expect the boys to keep fighting for the team until the last second and also encourage each other to keep fighting. However, after those 2 and 3-0, we continued to play soccer in half-islands, with everyone being too preoccupied with themselves. However, we are only strong if we are strong as a team. Let this be a tough lesson. Now the team has to stand upright in the match against KV Oostende. Everything was against us today, but let's hope everything happens on one day this season. Then I am convinced we will show very different things in the coming months." (SF)
