Football Season Guide

ADO Den Haag were mostly dreadful last season and spent the entire campaign rooted to the bottom of the Eredivisie. They showed some signs of life in the spring but by then their fate was pretty much sealed and they are back to the second flight for a first time since 2008. Ruud Brood faces a pretty stern challenge in trying to get the Storks back into the top flight at the first time of asking. The squad looks very much thin on the ground and devoid of quality after a raft of departures in the summer and almost no new signings. One has to wonder where the goals will come as there is no recognised striker in the squad at the moment and the players in the wide areas are hardly reliable. Brood will look to build on experienced players like John Goosens, Daryl Janmaat and Aaron Meijers but they will need a lot more to be competitive. In the short-term, ADO should mainly focus on getting back into a bit of a rhythm and stabilising in mid-table before focusing on bigger goals. Brood is a good manager for this particular task but, given what he has to work with right now, it looks like the club from the capital should be around the mid-table places and are very much outsiders in the promotion picture.