Football Season Guide

The 2018/19 season was Hartberg's first-ever in the top flight and they were widely considered to be likely to go straight back down to Erste Liga. The superb first half of the season they have had made sure that their Bundesliga dream will go on for at least one more season, but they ended up staying up by the skin of their teeth, having finished just above bottom Wacker Innsbruck. They were the league's worst side in the second half of the previous campaign and would have gone down had they not done as well as they did in the first half of the season. Their board's decision to stick with Markus Schopp therefore comes as a bit of a surprise. Hartberg are desperately short of momentum and have not performed well for a while, but perhaps their board's decision to stick with the manager means that they accept the fact that Hartberg cannot be expected to maintain themselves in the top flight for too long. One of their top performers has left in Florian Flecker, but they have made several signings with Bundesliga experience in Felix Luckender, Christian Klem, Andy Lienhart and Stefan Rakowicz. Shipping in goals was among their main problems last season, so it is hardly a surprise that they signed four defenders this time around. Despite losing Flecker, Hartberg look a touch stronger than they were last season, but time will tell whether or not this will be enough for them to stay up.