As we reach the three week winter break, Anderlecht lead the Jupiler league table by one point from Gent. Club Brugge are a further two points off the pace in third place.
The Mons – Anderlecht game was somewhat disappointing. The visitors went ahead through a rather soft penalty, converted by Guillaume Gillet, only for Mons to equalise after 85 minutes. The equaliser was due to a lack of communication between Silvio Proto and Roland Juhasz, with the latter clearing the ball against Mons substitute Chris Makiese with the rebound going past a surprised Proto. Still, it was enough to give Anderlecht a clear lead at the top of the table before the winter break.
Behind Anderlecht, Gent and Club Brugge both won on Boxing Day. Trond Sollied’s men took a long time to find their feet against Westerlo but eventually scored three times in the last 15 minutes. The pick of the Gent team was Yassine El Ghanassy, often linked to Manchester City and a few more of the usual suspects.
Club Brugge stayed in third place with a win over Zulte Waregem, their fifth victory under Christoph Daum by the score of 1-0 (known locally as a “score-Daum”). Club Brugge were missing Vadis Odjidja and Niki Zimling so they had some good excuses for not being at the top of their game. However, they are not showing enough creativity or firepower. On the day following the match, Zulte Waregem sacked their coach Darije Kalezic for a series of poor results.
Standard Liege were missing even more key players (Jelle Van Damme, Meme Tchite, Sinan Bolat, William Vainqueur and Sebastien Pocognoli) when they went to Kortrijk. In a poor game, the home team took the points and leapfrogged over Standard into fourth place. It was Standard’s first defeat since October (the 5-0 thrashing at Anderlecht).
Racing Genk put on a spectacular display with Cercle Brugge being the visitors at the Cristal stadium. Cercle Brugge twice went ahead but at half time it was Genk on top; 3-2. Genk had started with Barda, Vossen and Benteke and the offensive strategy worked. Israeli striker Barda was the star of the show with a goal and an assist.
Foe KV Mechelen, David Destorme got two more goals against Leuven and they also had a goal unjustly disallowed. At the end, Leuven shared the points with Derick Ogbu (Chuka) grabbing another goal – his seventh this season. There is little to say about the other matches; goalless draws between Beerschot and Lierse and between Lokeren and Sint Truiden.
Results:
Club Brugge 1 Zulte Waregem 0
Kortrijk 2 Standard 0
KV Mechelen 2 Leuven 2
Lokeren 0 Sint Truiden 0
Beerschot 0 Lierse 0
Gent 3 Westerlo 1
Genk 4 Cercle Brugge 2
Mons 1 Anderlecht 1