Rapid are coming from a thoroughly disappointing season in which they failed to reach every reasonable goal, as they failed to win any silverware and also failed to qualify for European football in the upcoming season.
The Viennese actually started the season with a lot of optimism surrounding them, as they moved to their new Allianz Stadion, had a decent squad and a new manager in charge in Mike Buskens. Their early results will be in line with the expectations, as they were doing well in the league and also managed to reach the group stage of the Europa League, where they recorded decent early results and had outside hopes of making the knock-out stage of the competition.
However, everything started to collapse in late September, as the Green-Whites suddenly started to struggle at both ends of the pitch both in the league and in Europe, with the poor run that they had resulting in them dropping into the midtable places and fail to qualify for the knock-out stage of the Europa League, as they finished third in their group.
The board opted to fire Mike Buskens and appoint the man of the moment in Damir Canadi, but Canadi's career in the capitol city was pretty much a carbon copy of David Moyes's infamous stay at Manchester United, as Canadi was unable to adapt to the size of the club and tried to get Rapid to play reactive football, which is something that their players were simply not used to, or got at. The result was that Rapid were drawn into the relegation race, with the board making their second managerial change of the season, replacing Canadi with Goran Djuricin, who took over as interim.
Djuricin managed to steady the ship and lead Rapid to survival and also to the Austrian cup final, where they were edged out by Salzburg after conceding a late goal. As a consequence, the Green-Whites will not be in Europe next season, but Djuricin has been appointed their permanent manager and will now have the summer to make the squad his own.
