I am planning another series of 23/24 team previews for the summer, those from last year have to be viewed as wildly successful, they highlighted a promoted team who won their national cup, a team to be relegated @ 17.0 who are quoted as low as 1.14 this morning and Brighton and Brentford to thrive in the EPL. We always seem to go close and get a good run for our money as a minimum with these long term selections and I do spend a lot of time on them. I already have basic notes on three teams ready and a handful of others on a short list, so subscribers can watch out for those in the coming weeks .

 

In the Bundesliga, after ten straight titles it looks like Bayern Munich are going to come up short this season, with Borussia Dortmund three points away from the crown and hosting a Mainz team, who have conceded at least three goals in each of their last four starts, on Saturday. Six weeks ago I wrote.....

 

Thomas Tuchel has now taken charge of three games as head coach of Bayern Munich, two Bundesliga wins which have given them a two point advantage at the top of the table and a home defeat to Freiburg in the DFB-Pokal. I doubt anyone in Munich was happy about that, but if they win the Champions League that will soon be forgotten. The timing of the replacement of Julian Nagelsmann with Tuchel surprised the football world, but even with those two wins, Bayern have their smallest Bundesliga points total through 27 games since 2011/12 and have scored the fewest number of goals since 2018/19. It is hard to see this 22/23 version as a classic Bayern team and they have gone out of the Champions League at this stage of the competition in each of the last two seasons and the hat-trick feels firmly on the cards. 

I can only imagine the discussions that have gone on behind the scenes at the Allianz, they are going to lose the title (or so it seems) to a team posting an incredibly low points total (some six short of what is traditionally required) and to a Dortmund side who have already lost 7 games.

 

It has not been a classic Bundesliga by any stretch of the imagination, tiny Union Berlin were still in the title race a month ago and either they or Freiburg are going to claim a Champions League spot, all credit to the incredibly well run duo, but they both have bottom five budgets and that reflects poorly on the bigger clubs. Dortmund, Bayern, Leipzig all lost to Man City in the CL, Borussia played ok, to be fair, but the other two were beaten by a combined 10-0 in the two games played at the Etihad! Leverkusen did not make it through the CL group stage and whilst Dortmund and RBL did, the former were beaten at the R16 stage by a Chelsea team who are embarrassed by how bad they have been this season (12th in the EPL currently, averaging a goal per game scored) and Leipzig were simply humiliated by City at the same stage.

 

For the eight seasons prior to 20/21, the average gap between the Bundesliga winner and team in 17th place (bottom team can often be tailed off) was 53.4 points, in the last two seasons it has been 45 and 49 (two of the three lowest in the last decade) and this morning, with one round to go, stands at 39 points. Everything has got tighter and teams closer in ability and that doubtless makes for a more interesting and exciting Bundesliga and it is fun to see a new title winner, if indeed we do, but difficult to see this as a golden generation of German teams and it could be the exact opposite! We can return to this in the summer.

 

Good luck!