2011-2012 German Bundesliga Preview: Relegation Candidates

As we approach the kick off of the 2011-2012 German Bundesliga season, I decided that it was time to have a preview of the upcoming season. This year aims to be one of the most exciting in history as the Bundesliga has earned four UEFA Champions League places.

Your season preview will be broken down into three categories: Relegation Contenders, Mid-Table Clubs and Champions League Contenders. Today we’ll start with the relegation Contenders.

1. FC Kaiserslautern
During the summer Kaiserslautern sold forward Srđan Lakić to VfL Wolfsburg. Lakić was the club’s leading scorer last year with 16 goals (the next closest was 5). This was the equivalent to one-third of the club’s total goals scored last year. That’s a very difficult amount of offense to replace in one transfer window. Even with the outstanding Christian Tiffert running the midfield, FCK will struggle to score goals this season. they’ve brought in Itay Shechter from Hapoel Tel Aviv, but time will tell if Shechter can transfer his goal scoring record (better than 1 goal per two matches in Israel) over to the Bundesliga.

FC Augsburg
Augsburg won automatic promotion to the Bundesliga last season and will need a great performance to stay up this year. They were able to hold on to their two leading goalscorers from last season in Nando Rafael and the 22 year old Stephan Hain. They’ve brought in defender Dominic Peitz from Union Berlin to add some depth to the defensive corps that led the 2.Bundesliga last season in allowing the fewest goals. Augsburg have also signed Lorenzo Davids from NEC in the Dutch Eredivisie. Davids is the cousin of famous soccer player Edgar Davids.

SC Freiburg
Freiburg finished 9th in the Bundesliga last season which was their best finish since the 2000-2001 season when they finished 6th. The club relied on the goalscoring form of Senegalese forward Papiss Cissé. He finished second in the golden boot race to Mario Gomez with 22 goals. This was the most goals scored by an Africa in the Bundesliga since Tony Yeboah scored 20 in 1993. With other clubs now having seen Cissé at his top form for an entire season, one would think that they have worked at ways to force someone other than Cissé on Freiburg to beat them. When you take a gander at Freiburg’s roster, you see that chances are pretty good if you stop Cissé you stop Freiburg.

Borussia Mönchengladbach
Gladbach survived the relegation playoff last season and will likely find themselves right there in the thick of things again this year. They haven’t made any major signings this summer, but I think the signing of Copenhagen defender Oscar Wendt could go a long ways to helping their survival in the top flight. With Wendt, Dante, Roel Brouwers and Filip Daems patrolling in front of Marc-André ter Stegen, the Foals may actually have a Bundesliga-surviving-quality defense. It will be interesting to see exactly how long the club is able to hold on to midfielder Marco Reus this year. Reus has been looked at by bigger clubs for the last two seasons, and he is a prime candidate for a club looking for a dynamic midfielder. Scoring goals will likely be hard to come by for the club relying on Igor de Camargo and Mohammadou Idrissou, but the club will hope Manchester United loanee Joshua King brings them some luck for the coming season.