Two goals and a mark of 9.00 to go with them. Strikers are judged on afternoons like this one and remembered for far fewer of them than people imagine.
3 straight away victories. Sides that win away are usually sides that can defend and can counter, and the table has begun to reflect what those journeys have earned.
The oldest argument in any dressing room and the only one that is genuinely about football: one man thinks another is not putting enough in. It is also the row a manager privately does not mind having happened.
Squad14 Sep 2026
13 new faces, and Anderlecht are still learning each other
A squad rebuilt inside one window pays for it in a currency nobody budgets for. The football is not worse than the sum of the players; it is worse than the sum of the players who have played together before.
There is a particular kind of quiet from an away end watching one man score twice. Anthony Martial provided it, and the 8.77 beside his name is if anything generous to everybody else.
A mark of 8.19 means one thing beside a twenty-nine-year-old's name and something else entirely beside a 21-year-old's. Nobody at the ground needed telling which this was.
The deadline has passed and the squad is the squad. 18 arrived, 1 left, and everything else printed about this club last month was a rumour that stayed one.
“I want to win things, and I would like to do it here.” Nothing has been demanded and nothing has been threatened — but a boardroom at Anderlecht hears a sentence like that exactly as it was built.
Danylo Sikan and a teammate said things this week that will take longer than a week to unsay. It was not about football, and both of them play on Saturday.
Every footballer has an answer to the question about his boyhood club, and most of them never get to act on it. Federico Bicoro has, at Anderlecht, and the first month will show what that does to a man.
The hardest thing about being 21 in a senior side is that nobody makes allowances. Tristan Degreef did not need any: 7.83, and he looked the most comfortable man on the pitch.
A defender on the scoresheet, which happens rarely enough that everybody in the ground remembers who took the corner. 1 for him, and a mark of 7.85 for the rest of it.
1‑0 against Club Brugge, and the songs went on long after the whistle. League positions come and go; days like this get retold at family dinners for years.
The offer from Westerlo for Ali Maamar was heard out and sent back the same day. First bids are rarely meant to succeed; they are meant to find out how loudly the door closes.
Andrew Omobamidele and a teammate said things this week that will take longer than a week to unsay. It was not about football, and both of them play on Saturday.
Squad24 Aug 2026
Words at Anderlecht training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Adriano Bertaccini is at the centre of it, and the squad will now find out whether the standard rises or the pair of them simply stop speaking.
It is the most legitimate ambition in the sport and the hardest for most clubs to satisfy. Anthony Martial wants continental football; whether Anderlecht can provide it is a question about the next two seasons, not about him.
Successful dribbles: 47. He went past people as if he had been told there was a prize for it, and by the end the full-back had stopped pretending to try.
Not now, not at any price the club was prepared to say out loud. KV Oostende have kept their man, and Anderlecht go back to a list with one name crossed off it.
The phone has started ringing about Ilay Camara again, and this time the name on the line is Olympique de Marseille. Anderlecht are listening politely and promising nothing.
$800.0K on the table at Charleroi. The manager wanted him, the board agreed a number, and the only voices still to be heard are the ones at the other club.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Adriano Bertaccini was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
100 games in this shirt, through managers and relegations and everything else. Service like it is disappearing from the game and the crowd knows what it is watching.
Beat anybody else and it is three points. Beat them, with his name on it, and it is a year of bragging rights for Anderlecht and a story that will outlast his contract.
Andrew Omobamidele was at the centre of it, and by the time it was pulled apart there were three or four others involved. Training grounds are small places and long seasons make them smaller.
He is 23 and the ground already sings his name, which is a thing that happens to local boys and almost never to signings. Everything from here is measured against an affection he did nothing to earn except be from here.
There is no fee, no unveiling and no agent on the steps. Thomas Batshuayi has been at this club since he was a boy and is now, formally, one of the first-team squad — which for a local readership beats any signing of any size.
Clubs spend fortunes looking for players and occasionally find one down the corridor. Kevin Carrasco is that, and the reception he gets on his first appearance will be different in kind from the one any signing receives.
The bid was some way short and Anderlecht did not need long over it. Nobody in the game reads a first refusal as the end of anything.
Player ratings3 Aug 2026
Mario Stroeykens, 21, plays like he has been here for years — 8.12
A mark of 8.12 means one thing beside a twenty-nine-year-old's name and something else entirely beside a 21-year-old's. Nobody at the ground needed telling which this was.
“Some decisions take a long time. This one took ten minutes, and most of that was finding a pen.” Colin Coosemans and Anderlecht agree another 2 years.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Anderlecht this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
The oldest argument in any dressing room and the only one that is genuinely about football: one man thinks another is not putting enough in. It is also the row a manager privately does not mind having happened.
There is a particular warmth a ground reserves for a 21-year-old it feels ownership of. Mario Stroeykens has it now, and everything he does for the rest of his time here will be measured against the goodwill he was handed for free.
Conceding is one thing; the response is what tells you about a dressing room. Mihajlo Cvetković had Anderlecht level again within 1 minutes, and Racing Genk never got to play with a lead at all.
The fixture the calendar is arranged around. Form goes out of the window, the table is not consulted, and for ninety minutes Anderlecht will be judged on one thing only.