Football Season Guide

Eintracht Frankfurt were relegated in catastrophic circumstances two seasons ago but managed to settle themselves quickly and gain promotion at the first time of asking. They will be relieved to have done that but though they will fancy their chances of surviving, it is certainly not guaranteed that they will be strong enough to stay up. Nikolov is a good veteran 'keeper who can compete with excellent youngster Trapp who was signed from Kaiserslautern. The defence in front of him has added Demidov and Oczipka who are both good options but Butscher, Amedick, Jung and Djakpa all have top level experience already. In the midfield the system used will be interesting as there are several strong players here and finding the way to maximising their efficiency could be tricky. Kohler, Schwegler and Meier are all superb players while Aigner, Rode and Lanig will all hope to feature regularly as well. The attack does look a weak area as while Matmour and Hoffer are decent, they are not top quality and an awful lot of responsibility will be put on the shoulders of Occean. Frankfurt are a big club but are used to underachieving and they will have to lift their performances considerably from two years ago if they are to avoid being mired in a relegation battle once more.