VfB Stuttgart Season Preview

VfB Stuttgart

Coach: Markus Babbel

Markus Babbel came in the second half of the season and with him Stuttgart got back success. With a lot of wins he managed to get his team on 3^rd position, which means Champions League Qualification and big money.

Babbel who personally loves rock music, has the abilities to let his team rock as well and his aim will be to show the same performances with his team as at the end of the last season!

Money spend for transfers: 9.600.000
Money earned from transfers: 43.100.000 €

Balance: +33.500.000 €

The curse of big money.
It is good to have money, but together with Real Madrid and Man City pushing transfer prices into the sky and the fact that every club knows about big Gomez deal (sold for more than 30 million to Bayern) they are facing over-the-top prices.

Horst Heldt, manager of Stuttgart doesn't want to join the crazy cycle where everyone is paying big money for average to good players. They were interested in Huntelaar, Love and Negredo but yet no striker could be presented.

Atmosphere during training camp&test matches:

Stuttgart had acceptable test match results. Against Schalke they won (1:0) in the T-Home Cup but lost in the final against Hamburg (0:3) where they changed the whole team compared to the match against Schalke though.

A lot of rotation and testing was done, especially in front they have to find a way to fill the Gomez gap.

Possible line-ups & tactics:









Probably:

1. 4-4-2 (4-2-2-2); LB,CB,CB,RB,DM,DM,LOM,ROM,ST,ST

Aim set by club:

To repeat last season success.

Team check:

Goalkeeper: 8/10

Last season of Jens Lehmann here.
He is aged already and does do some big mistakes from time to time.
Of course his experience is a big plus, but at the end his performances will count.
Second goalkeeper Ulreich is young, talented but with some mistakes when he played as well.

Defence: 7/10

The defence is average to good.

Boka and Magnin on left back position are not world class players. Celozzi was bought who has to show his skill on this position at first.
The centre backs are good. Tasci was hunted by many clubs and Delpierre is a good guy as well.
As right back we have the young Träsch. Good team player.

All in all the defence will profit from good midfield defence, but against big teams they may have some trouble.

Midfield: 8/10

Hitzlsperger, Khedira, Gebhart, Hilbert and Lanig are young guys who know the way Stuttgart plays very well.
Together with experienced players such as Bastürk, Simak and Elson they have a defensive minded midfield which does the work given by the coach quite good.
Especially closing the centre is working good and if they get the ball they switch to offense which often happens over the wings.

Striker: 6/10

After Gomez left Stuttgart has a big gap here. And the money they earned is not reinvested yet. Huntelaar and Vagner Love were the names linked with Stuttgart, but yet no striker arrived.

Only Cacau and Marica that's really risky. Cacau is a good striker, but tends to be injured once in a season and Marica never showed why he should be worth the money payed for him. Another striker must be bought, otherwise I see problems in this position for Stuttgart!

Total: 7/10

My prognosis:

I thought long time about this one.
In general the team contains many hungry and young players who are also experienced. With Babbel they have a coach who played in Stuttgart himself and who knows how the philosophy of Stuttgart looks like.
That is a big advantage for sure.

The only aspect that which causes pain in the stomach is a missing new striker. Of course you can somehow handle it with Cacau and Marica. And if one of them is injured you can switch to to 4-5-1 system. But it decreases the quality definitely.

Because of this [it may change very fast if they buy a new striker]and the fact that the other teams have a lot of quality as well I don't see Stuttgart under the top 3 again.

Maybe they can reach 4^th or 5^th position, but therefore someone needs to be behind the wheel and lead the team as Gomez did it very often in past.