After the conclusion of Week 21 action, Al Kharaitiyat secured a 50-50 chance of staying in the QNB Stars League with a 3-2 win over Qatar SC, thereby earning a play-off with Second Division runners-up Al Wakrah on 14th April.

Al Shahania have already qualified for the top flight as Second Division champions.

Al Kharaitiyat are in the 11th position with 16 points with only the game against Al Sadd left to be played.

Al Kharaitiyat have four victories, as many draws and 13 defeats. They have scored 28 goals and received 53 to have the worst record of goals conceded.

It may be recalled that The Thunders had finished the first phase in 10th position with nine points and that showed their performance graph had slightly been on the decline.

Looking back at Al Kharaitiyat’s league campaign this season, the club management, headed by Sheikh Khalifa bin Thamer Al Thani, again showed confidence in Qatari players such as Mohamed Abdulrab, Abdulla Al Anzi, Abdulrahman Mussabah, Abdelaziz Al Ansari and Mahmoud Saad.

They signed Ivorian professional Josue Mohey, replacing Brazilian Domingos, while retaining Moroccans Anwar Diba and Rachid Tiberkanine as well as Uzbek Sanjar Tursunov.

Tunisian coach Ahmed Al Ajlani too continued from the previous season. However, things did not go well with the technical staff. There were many negative results and the team could not collect many points.

The club management decided to replace Al Ajlani with Syrian Yasser Sebaei in a bid to save the team from relegation.

It was quite clear that Al Kharaitiyat were let down by defence, which was their forte. In the process, they also suffered big-margin defeats, the prominent being 2-8 loss to Al Duhail in the first phase and then 0-5 to the same opponents in the second phase.

Despite the setbacks, a number of players, mainly Tiberkanine and Diba, kept performing well for them.

There is no doubt Al Kharaitiyat did not have a good season. They will be eager to first put it across Al Wakrah in the play-off and then embark on next season’s campaign on a strong note.