Football Season Guide

AC Wolfsberger have established themselves as a solid mid-table Bundesliga club over the past decade and have rarely looked like going down, while even enjoying a few European forays. The Wolves have also made a name for themselves as a side who are excellent at home and very poor on the road. However, whilst they continued to struggle on their travels last season, their home form was not as good as it usually is either. They even flirted with relegation for a while, but eventually had too much quality and managed to secure their survival once more. It is clear from their activity during the summer that their board does not have the funds available to make the step forward and make the Wolves competitive in the European places, given that they have signed only three players. Bernd Gschweidl is the only one out of the three with previous Bundesliga experience. Moreover, they have also lost a number of players, but this is not as much of a problem as it may seem at first glance. They had a ridiculously large squad last season and it was always a logical move to try and trim it, which is exactly what they have done. The squad was heavily affected by injuries last season - they do not have key players as such, but Heimo Pfeifenberger rarely had less than five players on the injury list in the second half of the season and will obviously be hoping for his side to have much more luck this time around. While it is clear that Wolfsberger have not significantly improved, if at all, in terms of the quality of their squad, one should have in mind that they normally perform better than they did last season when not having as many injury problems as they used to have. In Pfeifenberger, they have an experienced manager capable of getting the most out of his squad and they will also have a group of players that are used to playing together and all of this will give them hope going into the upcoming season. On the other side, there is little doubt that they have been on a bit of a downward trend over the last few seasons and will feel uneasy going into the new campaign due to this.