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Will the 2007/2008 season be a repeat of 2006/2007, or will Sparta fall back to its cellar-dwelling habits of old?
Six players left Sparta during the summer: Bart Mertens, on the Board's request, fetched EUR 950,000 from Twente. And I sold Adriano Monteiro for the bargain price of EUR 850,000 to De Graafschap. He's making less there than he made with us. I was happy to see him go. A few of the other players were grumbling, but the Board wasn't and the players will get over it.
I signed striker Mama Bakayoko from Ajax for EUR 1.8 M, equal to all the transfer money I got for Monteiro and Mertens. I loaned Fred van den Belt from Go Ahead to play defense and signed Barry McDonald also from Go Ahead for EUR 600,000 to platoon with Bas Jacobs.
Sparta has more than EUR 15 M in the bank and the Board is pleased with me.
This season's winning eleven:
I put Kamp in there because he's been very effective in the few games I played him so far. It's kind of a gamble. If it doesn't work out, I'll happily send him back to Germany.
The customary three preseason friendlies went increasingly well. Kamp scored a couple of goals against Aachen and all looked well. We breezed through the Cup qualifiers with more goals from Kamp and strong performances from Fred Simons and Theo Jans.
In the league, we opened against RKC and PSV, two top teams. Against RKC, Wouter van der Linden picked up a red card and we lost 3-1. Against PSV, Michael Dorst received a double yellow red card and we ended up losing 0-4. That was a frustrating match where we played well and had more shots on goal than PSV, but nothing went in. Normally, after a loss to any of the big teams the Board complains but not this time.
We picked up a point in Tilburg where Jochen Kamp scored the 1-1 against Willem II and three more at home against Utrecht with a riveting performance. Two goals from the in-form Simons and another by Kamp sealed a 3-1 win.
A 1-0 loss to Roda wrapped up the first instalment of the 2007/2008 season. We played a good first half but on two days' rest after the Utrecht game, couldn't hold on to an otherwise deserved tie. The loss moved us from twelfth to sixteenth but I feel confident that we'll get an undeserved win somewhere along the season so we can repeat last year's thirteenth place.
