Sunday’s hosts, Koln, will be seeking to produce a much better campaign this time around in the German Bundesliga having narrowly avoided relegation from the domestic top flight at the end of last season, starting with this Sunday afternoon’s clash with Hertha Berlin at their RheinEnergieStadion.
Having finished the regular season third from bottom in the Bundesliga, Koln were required to undergo a two-legged relegation/promotion play-off against Bundesliga 2 hopefuls, Holstein Kiel, and Koln were perhaps fearing the worst after losing the 1st leg at home 1-0.
However, Koln came out fighting in the 2nd leg and thrashed Holstein Kiel 5-1 to secure their top flight status for another season, and they’ll be keen to pick up where they left off las term as the hosts lost just one of their last five games towards the end of the campaign.
Inconsistency hampered Koln last season though and given this is opening day, the goals market appeals here as 12 of Koln’s 17 home games resulted in both teams scoring.
Sunday’s visitors, Hertha Berlin, fared little better than their upcoming hosts as they finished just two league places and two points above Koln at the end of last season, despite really tightening up their act towards the end of the campaign, losing just one of their final nine games of the term.
Three wins and five draws made up the remainder of the nine games and included wins against Bayer Leverkusen, Freiburg and Schalke while five of these last nine games also resulted in both teams hitting the back of the net as well.
However, although Hertha Berlin produced a soldi sequence of results in the latter stages of last season which ultimately secured their Bundesliga status for this season, the visitors possessed a poor record away from home.
With just one win from their last 13 away matches of last term, Hertha Berlin were fortunate that their failure to gain results on the road didn’t come back to haunt them, and this poor run of results also included six defeats.
In addition, Hertha Berlin managed to keep just two clean sheets in these last 13 away games which leads us up nicely to a possible opportunity in the goals market for this clash as eight of the last 13 away games also saw both teams score, and this could well be the case this Sunday too.