German Bundesliga Season 2008-2009 Team by Team Review (Part III)

Previously I had reviewed the 2008-2009 season from 1st to 12th. This paer I will review the remaining teams in te bottom of the table:

13th place - Eintract Frankfurt: Ordinary can describe it all. The team did not perform well in the attacking line. Martin Fenin had a drastic season overall, he was an invisible man in the team. The other strikers could not perform well as well, only Ioannis Amanitidis had some good performance before his injury, no wonder they only scored 39 goals this season. Furthermore, the defense of the team did not do very well, as they had lost 60 goals this season. However, the home ground performance was good enough for them to get away from relegation, they had won 5 times and drawn 4 times out of 17 games. So home performance was the key of avoiding the further drop.

14th place - VfL Bochum: Same as Eintract Frankfurt, they had the problem of the attacks. Stanislav Sestak was the most important player in the team and he was the best striker in the team in fact. Diego Klimowicz even though joined the team in the winter, his effect was very limited as he did not fit in the team well. The reason why they stayed away from the relegation zone was the defense. They had the second best defense within the bottom six, which they lost 55 goals. And, they had 11 draws of the season that led them to successfully avoid the relegation in the last 2 weeks of the season.

15th place - Borussia Mönchengladbach: Previously I had tipped Gladbach would be the first team to be relegated, in fact I was wrong. Their gamble paid off in the midseason cleanup. Tomas Galasek performed very well to protect the midfield and relieved lots of pressure to the defense line. New goalkeeper Logan Bailly did a consistent job in order to try hard to stop goals, even they had lost 62 goals still. Alexander Baumjohann and Marko Marin did so well that the attack was improved a lot after the winter break. This was a great escape for them this season and they should have learn this lesson which nearly costed them a Bundesliga seat.

16th place - Energie Cottbus: Under the new league system, they had another chance to play against the third team in second division, which was 1. FC Nürnburg. However, their poor attacking led them to be beaten by 5-0 in aggregate. Lack of attacking options and the creativity led them to relegate this season. There was no one to create the attack consistently. All the hope was relying on Dimitar Rangelov. As he was injured, the whole team lost the attacking plays. Jiayi Shao should have done better, but the management did not trust him at all, so even Shao tried so hard, he only had very limited chances to play and he could not help the team which such a little playing time. I do not believe they can bounce back immediately as the other teams from second division are very competent.

17th place - Karlsruher SC: After 2 seasons in Bundesliga, the team went back to the place the belonged to. The team did not have any miracle at all, as their attack was very poor. They had recorded to be scoreless for more than 700 minutes showed that they did not know how to attack without Tamas Hajnal, who had transferred to Borussia Dortmund last summer. Josh Kennedy did not do well at all, as he was supposed to be the top striker in the team. Sebastian Freis was the only attacker did well in the team that was lacking of supplies. He did what he could but sadly it was not enough for helping the team to get out of trouble. Same as Cottbus, I do not believe they can bounce back right after the relegation.

18th place - Arminia Bielefeld: They were under the raider - for being the relegation team. They had the worst attacks in the Bundesliga, even worse that Karlsruher, scored 29 goals out of 34 games. Artur Wichniarek was the only player who could score goals but his cold streak in the last 2 months of the season directly led the team to relegate. The other players such as Vlad Munteanu should have done more and better as he was supposed to be the provider of scoring. Even they only lost 56 goals in the league, this was not good enough to cover the poor attacking. So this was the reason why they went down.

Now this is all of the review! Next time I will review the German teams in European competition.