Blauw-Zwart recorded a narrow win at Den Dreef after a hard-fought match. With a crucial save in the closing stages of the match, Simon Mignolet kept his nets clean.
Simon Mignolet
"It doesn't always have to be in a nice way. We played on away in Leuven today, which is always a difficult match." the goalkeeper looked back. "It was a very close match, very tactical too. They played well organized and tried to find space in the back of our defense. We anticipated that."
For Club, this means the third three-point win in a row. "I am very happy with the clean sheet, with the three points we take home and thus the nine out of nine. Matches like today you need if you want to become champions, although it is obviously very early to say anything about that. To realize nine on nine after a difficult displacement, to still finish such a match winningly, then you deserve kudos as a team." he spoke before disappearing into the locker room. No doubt with Wednesday's important Champions League match against Aston Villa in mind.
Nicky Hayen
"Clinical victory, without a doubt." Blauw-Zwart won with the smallest difference on the field from OH Leuven and coach Nicky Hayen was mostly relieved afterwards.
"I think we were prepared for a difficult match," Hayen began his analysis. "A team that puts good soccer on the mat and tries to break out with vertical play. They try to get to the speed of their attackers and wait patiently for you to get out to create a man-on-man situation. Then they have that speed to be very dangerous in that. I think we took out that biggest sting today, which is also why it didn't make for a great match. It was a businesslike and clinical game where you might have felt that the team that scores would win the game. Our play was also too slow, because we could have switched flanks faster. Surely there were the necessary spaces there, but the execution in that was not enough and too slow. Then you actually play a little too stereotypically and create very few chances. The last fifteen or twenty minutes they also went to a system with two strikers. Then the game goes up and down and there are some chances on both sides. So all in all, I think it's just a clinical victory, without a doubt," Club's coach concluded.