2017–18 Oud-Heverlee Leuven Season

The 2017–18 season was Oud-Heverlee Leuven's 16th competitive season in professional football and the team's second consecutive season at the second level following their relegation from the Belgian Pro League in 2016. It was also the first season under the ownership of the King Power International Group led by Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha.

OH Leuven lost points early throughout the season as several key starting players arrived only late in the 2017 summer transfer window, resulting in a poor league start of 2 wins, 4 draws and 1 loss from the opening 7 games. The team was not able to overtake Beerschot-Wilrijk anymore during the opening tournament, missing the first chance to qualify for the promotion play-offs by three points.

In the closing tournament the team again started mediocre, drawing against struggling teams Roeselare, Union SG and Tubize to set up a crucial away match to Cercle Brugge already on matchday 6, which was lost 1–0 against ten men. OH Leuven thereafter never managed to close the gap to Cercle Brugge and had to settle for the Europa League play-off matches, in which they scored wins against Waasland-Beveren and Excel Mouscron and a draw against a strong Zulte Waregem. Eventually the team ended fourth after finishing the season by being thrashed 5–0 away to Excel Mouscron, a score which was on the scoreboard already at half-time.

In the cup, the team strolled past Turnhout (playing two divisions lower) with seven different players scoring in an 8–0 win, before being eliminated after extra time by top division team Sint-Truiden. OH Leuven managed to come back from a deficit twice, the second time far into extra-time when down to nine men.

2017–18 squad

*This section lists players who were in Oud-Heveree Leuven's first team squad at any point during the 2017–18 season
*The symbol § indicates player left mid-season
*The symbol # indicates player joined mid-season
*The symbol ¥ indicates a youngster who has appeared on the match sheet at least once during the season (possibly as unused substitute)
*Italics indicate loan player

Transfers

During the summer of 2017, OH Leuven was very active on the transfer market, although initially this was most noticeable on the outgoing side with the contracts of Nicolas Delporte, Nathan Durieux, Jonathan Kindermans and Fazlı Kocabaş not being prolonged and five loan players returning to their parent clubs: Nathan de Medina returned to Anderlecht, Siebe Horemans, Lucas Schoofs and Serge Tabekou all returned to Gent and Yannick Loemba returned to Oostende. No official news was released at the time about Jeroen Simaeys, who had suffered a serious injury early 2017, but he was no longer being presented as part of the squad in spite of having a running contract. Early 2018 it would become apparent that the injury had effectively ended Simaeys' professional football career and that he had found an agreement with the club to terminate his contract early. On top of this in May Belgian First Amateur Division team Heist announced the signing of defender Mehdi Bounou, while Kenneth Houdret moved to direct opponents Union SG. On the incoming side, OH Leuven announced mid May the dual signing of defenders Clément Fabre (from Tubize) and Kenneth Schuermans (from Westerlo), while also mentioning that goalkeeper Laurent Henkinet had extended his contract by three seasons until 2020. Early June saw two further departures, with first Soufiane El Banouhi following Kenneth Houdret to Union SG, followed by Romain Reynaud who moved to French fourth tier team Andrézieux-Bouthéon. Later that month three more players departed the squad as Pieter-Jan Monteyne moved to Roeselare, Pierre-Yves Ngawa was signed by Serie B team Avellino and Ben Yagan moved to the Belgian First Amateur Division to play for Dessel Sport

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