Maybe Lotto are expecting too much of him and he's feeling the pressure to win. Lotto's lack of team strength does not help.
I can't be arsed with this. Seriously. There's like 4 or 5 teams were it would be different.
And if Van Eetvelt and Van Gils didn't do great things already and Lotto didn't have 7 wins with 6 different riders or weren't in the top 10 of the UCI ranking (both this year as 3 year ranking) I would kinda understand, but that's just not the case.
If there's pressure it's obviously coming from himself (and from the media that hyped him up like they do with every Belgian that does good at a young age). Which is understandable. If you sign a million euro contract you obviously expect from yourself that you win. That isn't easy at 22y old, but that's a choice you make ofcourse. People also just assuming that "pressure" is the reason. So much happened the last 3 months, dude has crashed 5 times if I include training crashes. 3 times in his last 4 races. That's a problem I would say (definitely cause a lot of them are just his own fault). It's like he needs trainingwheels.
And Vermeersch being out obviously doesn't help, that's true.
I'm 99% sure he'll resume racing on the 28th of April in his home region (well not really but it's somewhat close).