Football Season Guide

The 2016/17 season must be one of the more bizarre in the history of FC St. Pauli. The Hamburg based side were bottom at Christmas and looked almost certain for the drop. However, an incredible change of fortunes meant they ended up 7th overall and had the best second half of the season of any side that was not promoted. After such a tumultuous campaign, the summer has been very quiet in St. Pauli with the biggest news coming very soon after the end of last term - that head coach Ewald Lienen was stepping down. In his place, Lienen's former assistant coach will now take the hot seat and hope to continue the progress made at the end of last term. The club have not ventured into the transfer market all that much, which is not too surprising considering the squad still largely resembles the team which finished 4th in 2015/16. Although that is probably a target which is slightly out of reach for the club this season, Pauli have the quality in their team to secure a solid top half finish. Of the players to leave the team this summer only centre-back, Soren Gonther, will really be missed as he formed a formidable partnership with Lasse Sobiech when he was fit. The two biggest incoming players are without doubt the permanent signing of Cenk Sahin after an impressive loan spell and striker Sami Allagui arriving from Hertha Berlin. Sahin and Allagui's main job will be to support main striker Aziz Bouhaddouz who, much like the club as a whole, had an excellent finish to the season bagging 10 goals in the final 12 rounds. The correlation between the centre forward being in form and the team doing well is something which can be observed the world over but, should Bouhaddouz get the same service he did late last season, he will be deadly this campaign. Overall the squad looks solid and unless they have a similarly dramatic season to last term, a solid mid-table finish is likely to be their eventual place.