Football Season Guide

Fortuna enjoyed easy ride last season despite being tipped to struggle, with coach Funkel providing the fans with lots of goals and excitement as he urged his team to play open attacking football. However, with many players only on loan at the club it was inevitable that changes would take place in the summer and 2 of the key figures in attack from the previous campaign, Raman and Lukebakio, are no longer in Dusseldorf. Having limited finances Fortuna again dipped in the loan market to reinforce, with 7 players already at the club on season-long loans. From them goalkeeper Steffen, centre-back Adams and striker Kownacki are seen as regular starters and they will have to perform well if Fortuna want to stay out of trouble. Coach Funkel is one of the most experienced managers in the Bundesliga, plus he starts his fifth season in charge of Fortuna. The gaffer is not afraid to use bold tactics and he prefers to load most of the attacking efforts down the wings, making the wide players very important in his system. Not surprisingly 3 new wingers joined in the summer and they have big shoes to fill (Raman and Lukebakio operated down the 2 wings last season). Fortuna need to be scoring lots of goals as defensively they don’t look solid and also this is the area of the pitch where there is not much depth and experience.