Football Season Guide

Poor home form, some heavy away defeats and generally unsatisfying performances were characteristics of Hertha’s last season, which in the end resulted in logical managerial change in the summer. Instead of looking for an outside person to take charge Hertha’s Board decided to reward Ante Covic with the job after he spent the last 6 years as manager of Hertha’s reserves and Hertha’s U19s. This will be first senior job for Covic and he must be feeling nervous. The indications from pre-season are that Hertha will be moving the ball much quicker under Covic, with the modern-thinking Croat urging his players to use one-touch football when possible and also to stretch the pitch with lots of diagonal passes. With more variety in attack needed, Covic recruited exciting winger Lukebakio for record-sum to make him the main figure on the right flank, plus exciting 18-year-old striker Redan comes with lots of promise. To start with he is likely to be understudy of Selke and Ibisevic but, with the latter 35-years-old now, as the season progresses Redan might be one to watch. Grujic agreed to spend second consecutive year on loan at the club and the Serbian will remain key figure in midfield together with Duda. Under Covic Hertha are expected to be scoring more goals but, based on pre-season displays, they are yet to address the issues they had in defence last season. No major reinforcements have been signed at the back so far and this is a concern.