Karlsruher were deservedly relegated after playing some poor football all season despite a few managers trying to turn things around. The fact that many of the key players were obviously unhappy from round 1, the controversial coach Oral was blamed for spoiling the atmosphere in the dressing room over the summer, hardly helped and Karlsruher showed that they had a tough season ahead straight away after failing to win in the first six rounds.
Bad luck also affected the season and, just three games in, the experienced midfielder Krebs got injured and he didn’t recover until late April. Still, there was no excuse for the flat attacking displays and Karlsruher scored just two goals in these opening six matches to show that they are lacking quality strikers. Stoppelkamp, Diamantakos and Yamada were just three of the regulars clearly unhappy, with the most solid centre-back from the previous campaign Stoll also falling out of grace after just two games and not starting many games after that.
Things didn’t improve in October and November when five defeats in seven rounds and a long-term injury to the main right winger Torres decided Oral’s destiny. He was sacked at the beginning of December, but Karlsruher took their time in the search of their new boss and appointed experienced Mirko Slomka only during the winter break. By that point the situation already got desperate and still the Blues were hanging just above the direct relegation.
Slomka added four new names to the squad in January and his debut in charge was a success with Karlsruher showing much better attacking potential in their 3:2 win over Arminia. Unfortunately this proved to be false hope and, after winning just one more game in the next nine rounds and collapsing into last place, Slomka was sacked after round 27. The Board failed to find a new manager and it turned out that their decision to release Slomka wasn’t popular amongst the players, which saw Karlsruher suffering four consecutive heavy defeats after his departure to be officially relegated.
All campaign the lack of cutting edge and the instability at the back were hurting the team badly and there was no doubt that Karlsruher were going down after they failed to build any kind of team spirit throughout the campaign, which was hardly possible with so many changes to the line-up on weekly basis and the injuries to key players.
