Football Season Guide

Eventually Hamburger suffered their first ever relegation from the Bundesliga last May and after four very difficult seasons without any improvement the Board decided to shake things up during the summer months. Coach Titz, he took charge in March, remains at the helm for the start of the campaign, but he will be working with a very different squad now. As expected most of those on high wages left during the summer and instead of looking for as many decent replacements as possible Hamburger decided to look to their youth system. As many as 11 players from the junior ranks have been promoted to the senior team for the start of the new campaign, with all of the five new signings being pretty low key players that won’t get many starts between them. Titz is expected to arrange the system around those available and if nothing else Hamburger look capable of scoring lots of goals with the 18-year-old starlet Arp supported in the final third by Kostic, Hunt and Holtby. Lasogga is also back in the squad after an unsuccessful loan spell in England, but all of the last four are subjects of interest from top flight clubs and the transfer activity of the team needs to be monitored carefully until August is over. Ekdal, if he stays in the squad, will be the key figure in the middle of the park and there are not many better box-to-box midfielders than the Swede in Bundesliga 2. The defence needs tightening after very shaky displays last season and if regular centre-backs Papadopolous and Jung are to stay put they will have to be doing better. From the many youngsters added to the senior ranks the likes of Pfeiffer, Steinmann, Ferati and Opoku saw lots of playing time this pre-season and this hints that they will be regularly used off the bench during the campaign. Hamburger have the youngster squad in the division at the start of the season, captain Hunt is the only player aged 30 or more, and it will be very important for the fans to remain patient in the early months of the campaign as the last thing the relatively inexperienced group would want to deal with is added pressure from the stands. That said over the course of the last two seasons aggressive supporters impacted many of the home matches of Hamburger in a negative way and this is something that might happen again.