Swapping Stoke City for Royal Excel Mouscron for a season in the summer, Kevin Wimmer needed to get away from bet365 Stadium as quickly as possible.
Disappearing from the radars the moment Paul Lambert turned up to replace Mark Hughes, the Austrian defender realised his time with the Championship club was coming to an end.
An unsuccessful loan with Hannover 96 didn’t lead to a permanent transfer, so another avenues had to be explored in August, where he finally found a suitable option with the Belgian side.
The defender has already spoken about his reasons for leaving Stoke and his reasoning behind choosing Mouscron, but the disappointment of failing with the Potters remains a sensitive subject, one he brought up in a chat with DH.
He said: “[Lambert] didn’t want to hear about me and he pushed me to one side until the end of the season. It’s very difficult to live through moments like those because Stoke was everything for me, and all you need is a coach that doesn’t like you and he leaves you on the side for no reason. I wasn’t the only player in that boat”.
He also added: “Stoke desperately wanted to sell me. Clubs were interested but they asked for too much money, so no offer was made. Down my end, I absolutely wanted to leave Stoke City and in the last few days of the transfer window, they accepted to loan me to Mouscron.”
Arriving on August 31st, the defender had to wait until the end of the international break before making his debut, which he did at the weekend against KV Kortrijk in a 2-0 win.
He played the full 90 minutes, helping the Jupiler Pro League side climb up to third in the table, nine points ahead of RSC Anderlecht and four in front of last year’s winners KRC Genk.
