Bundesliga 2014 - 2015 season thread :

Bayern will win the league by 15 points at least.

/thread

 

The stand out team for me this season, next to Bayern and Dortmund of course, could be Schalke. They really have a cracking team and probably more depth in the squad than Dortmund. A good mixture of experienced leaders and youngsters. Some of the youngsters with a good bit of experience too, as they have been starters in the league and CL last season due to their injury problems.

The only downside for them could be their coach.
Keller is alright and a nice guy, but if they had someone like Klopp or Tuchel in charge, I`d say they would be the hipsters favorite all around Europe already.
Wouldn`t be surprised if they finished ahead of Dortmund in the end.

Wolfsburg is also in with a chance to finish top 3 or 4. Not sure if they are ready yet though.

edit

Just read that Pep would have liked to sign Reus, but our board has declined, as they didn`t want to give the impression that it is only being done to weaken the opposition.

So much for that old sh*te.

 

I thought there already was a Bayern thread. Seriously though it is going to be exciting seeing some of the many youngsters in the Bundesliga. The fact that Schalke has Meier Groetzka and Draxler and Max Meier within the same generation shows just how much promise the team from Gelsenkirchen has. The market for young good players in Germany is overflowing, and almost every team has its certain players that can become world class players. And if you mix the Schalke team up with more established players like Huntelaar, Farfan, Matip, Sam, Höwedes and so on, you have a really strong team.

PS: beware of spelling mistakes. Too tired to care really.

 

Really enjoyed watching the Bundesliga last year, I'll definitely be doing it again next season. There's only one winner though ...

 

And?

 

I love the fan culture in German football but what I don't like too much is the bundesliga, or any of the other domestic competitions for that matter. Its just frustrating to call Bayern strong favourites to win everything every season, and the punters aren't wrong in predicting this. I don't like the way Bayern can effortlessly usurp other teams' promising/well established players (eg lewandowski, ginter this summer) without much uproar. I just don't think that makes for good competition. Yes the games are great to watch, but in the long run the bundesliga just doesnt seem a healthy competition... Hope my view can change with your counter arguments

 

Well, first of all Ginter is not coming to us. He is signing for Dortmund.
Secondly, Lewandowskis contract was out, he would have left Dortmund anyway and if he wouldn`t have joined us, the league would have lost one of the best forwards in the world.

Bayern are of course by far the biggest club in the league and is always favorite to win it.
But don`t let the current situation blind you to the fact that in most seasons the title race is a very close affair. The rivals change from time to time, but there was nearly always a fierce competitor that has often beaten us to the title.

I doubt very much that we are going to run away with the title this coming season as we did in the last two years. We are traditionally having difficulties in post World Cup seasons.
If I am wrong and we are winning the BL again with a lot of games to spare I join you in questioning the health of the league. At the moment I would say it`s doing ok.
This current Bayern team is pretty much the best we ever had and we didn`t only dominate our domestic league but also together with Real, Barcelona and one or two Sugar daddy clubs, the Champions league.

I`d rather have a league where success comes through hard work and good management than because somebody decided to throw shit loads of money at a normally mediocre club, to buy success.

We are also partly buying success, but this goes down to the above mentioned good management over several centuries. Other clubs in the league simply didn`t do as well as we did when you look at history, but some of them are doing a good job at the moment in catching up.

When the Bundesliga was found, Bayern actually had a disadvantage, as only one club from a given city could be a founding member and 1860 was considered bigger than us at the time and therefore picked over us. Bayern had to work it`s way up first.

If you go further back in history you`ll see that Bayern was also the only bigger club that was relentlessly persecuted by the Nazis and barely made it through that time.

 

Ah, my mistake on the Ginter transfer.
I think the premier league is the only league in the world where you simply cannot predict who will win the league, who will make the top 4, or who will go down. The sheer unpredictability of the league is what excites most of us, from Manchester United to the recently promoted Burnley. We simply cannot say where we will lie. But for example say you're Hoffenheim or FC Augsberg, every season is underwhelming from a competition view, as (presumably) neither has any chance of winning any domestic competition or really progressing much further in the table. I could be wrong.
Thanks for the history, interesting stuff.

 

First of all I would like to stress, that I have a lot of respect for English football in general. I like your fan culture more than ours. Looking at the history of your league and some of the great clubs there (especially Manchester United and Liverpool) leaves me in awe. English and Scottish pioneers have brought this game to us, sometimes under great difficulty as the German elite at the time didn`t really like it at first.

But I absolutely hate the current model of ownership at some of the clubs in the PL. If it was brought to our league, there would be a riot, not only by Bayern supporters, but also by the supporters of clubs that could potentially profit from such a model. It causes a distortion of the normally slowly growing and changing club culture, which I find fascinating to watch over the centuries.

It is in my view also mainly responsible for the decline of the English national team, as it leaves you with only a handful native players with regular appearances in the clubs where you can pick up some experience on the highest level. But the depth for a squad that can seriously compete at a WC or EC is not there, due to the influx from foreign top players and managers that run the show. I could be wrong about that, but it`s the impression I have.

I think the only difference between the BL and the PL is that you really can`t predict who is going to win the league. But when it comes to the top 4, I don`t think there has been much of a change in recent years. It`s usually between United, City, Arsenal, Chelsea and Liverpool.

As for your Hoffenheim or Augsburg example, I don`t think clubs like Aston Villa or Newcastle feel any different.

Please know that I totally respect you and your opinion and I am not looking for an argument with you. Just telling you what my thoughts are on all this.

 

Well, I only picked Aston Villa and Newcastle as examples because for some reason they came to mind first. I could have picked any mid table team.
Yes Augsburg is making good progress at the moment. The management with their coach Weinzierl are doing excellent work there. But it could well go the other way again. Hard to know what`s gonna happen with them over the next 5 or 6 years.

 

Yes, it`s absolutely crazy! And he kind of plays like him too.

For an amateur like me it`s hard judge a youngster in games like these, but it seems like that he actually looks quite promising?

 

I didn`t think we would win this with that team, but there you go. I know these pre season tournaments don`t mean a lot, but this C team looked really good. Looks like we`re going to change our basic system to a 3-4-3.

I think Badstuber looked really on a good way. Never was a fan of him, but Pep seems to love him. He knows a thing or two more about football than I do.
Also, Hoejberg absolutely fantastic again. Hope we`ll see him a lot more this season....

 

I hope BVB will not get plagued by injuries again this season.