A fully developed Hayter is primed and ready (we hope) to take over leadership duties in the climbs and stage races. We do not expect to be chasing too many breaks, given our leader is just about sub-top on the terrain. It was a conscious decision not to focus too much on climbing support for this season, but rather more on versatile riders who could help across terrains and disciplines.

Mick Van Dijke is rewarded for his performances last season, by spending time in our training program and hulking up his hill-climbing ability in the off-season. We have improved his support squad from last season, add Boileau, Nerurkar and Vinokurov to the trusted pair of Hofstede and McCormick to deliver him into good positions on the hills of PCT and beyond.

Possibly the 'fun-nest' part of our squad and also the most unpredictable in terms of the kind of expectations we should be making on them, which would also be realistic. Lampawog comes in to lead our Northern Classics setup and is another rider who has benefited from our off-season training program. Scotson adds more muscle to the existing pairing of Hoole and Allegaert.

The flats are another area where we have reduced our focus. However, Kulikovskiy has done very well in the sprints in the last two seasons, basically relying on wheel-surfing without any leadouts, and that is basically the plan this time as well. Alben will be able to share some of the load in stage races, with the latter only racing together in a couple of races. We hope Tim Van Dijke can play the role of an able pace-maker/roleur on the flats

Age is catching up to Zmorka, but he is still our best TT rider by a margin. Conci and Lampawog will be his able lieutenants in a number of TTTs, with Scotson adding more depth to the trio of Van Dijke, John and Hoole this season.

Ronaldo, Trezise and Rojit are all in their final year of development, and are all loaned out. Our target of getting a top cobbles or TT talent remained unfulfilled this season, so we hope to be able to change at least one part of that next season.

After our disappointing relegation from PT last season, we wanted to thin the squad and yet consolidate our leadership positions. We were able to do both, and get leaders who should be competitive or better in all terrains, a team building philosophy we have tried to follow in every season we have been a part of the peloton. Will our leaders excel in all the terrains, most likely not, but we hope to keep chipping away in all of them, to end up in a respectable position at the end of the season. This season is also the transition in us starting to put our faith in our home-grown talents as team leaders with MVD being the first in line to do so, with Hayter and others hopefully following suit in the coming years. With regards to our expectations this season, we do not think we have a team to be a direct promotion candidate, but we are hoping to end up somewhere in the few positions just below the Top 5.