Hannover 96 Preview

Hannover 96

Coach:

Dieter Hecking Dieter Hecking does know the club very good from his own time as a player.
1998 he helped the club to get to 2.Bundesliga.
The last season was not as expected, probably because they set too high aims after the season before which ended almost in International position. Anyway, this season Dieter Hecking has Jörg Schmadtke as manager behind him.

Both know each other from good old Alemannia Aachen years. Boss Martin Kind does support Hecking also after his bad last season, but expects a better performance for sure!

Money spend for transfers: 400.000 €
Money earned from transfers: 200.000 €

Balance: -200.000 €

Atmosphere during training camp&test matches:

Test matches worked quite well for Hannover. First matches were against low league teams which was good for the motivation and self-confidence of the strikers.

Many goals for the strikers in those matches, but the main work and main improvement had to be done in the defence and they really worked on it.
Bad luck with youngster Chahed who broke his feet and who will miss long-term!

Possible line-ups & tactics:










Most likely:

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

Aim set by club:

To play behind the top 10 clubs, get close to them rather than close to relegation positions.

Team check:

Goalkeeper: 9/10

Without any doubt Robert Enke is one of the best in Hannover.
He did show so many great performances last season in Hannover!

You could read everywhere and in any forum of any Bundesliga team that other fans said "oh man poor Enke", because he often got not payed off for his great performances.

His defence let him alone and it is just impossible to safe every ball. Very good goalkeeper for sure here.

Defence: 3/10

The biggest weakness was the defence for quite a long time now in Hannover.
Jörg Schmadtke is trying to improve the defence with cheap players but can you get good defender for free or for very low amount of money? I guess no..

Well as left back Hannover has Konstantin Rausch, young guy but he lacks a lot of experience. To add some quality they got Djakpa from Leverkusen. Djakpa himself did not play a lot in Leverkusen and he is only average Bundesliga player.

Right back is Cherundolo who is an experienced guy with low mistake rate, but his problem is that he is quite often injured.

Centre position. Man how bad they performed here last season. Mario Eggimann and Valerien Ismail could not show what was expected. Eggimann had a big mistake rate while Ismail was long-term injured. In order to improve on this position they bought Haggui from Leverkusen. Haggui can be a good transfer, he showed some good performances in Leverkusen but he has to make the next steps in his carrier.

But often we see new players in Hannover doing a step back rather than forward.. All in all still not convincing me.

Midfield: 4/10

The midfield does show big deficits as well.
Balitsch had problems during the preparation time and could not train always. Lala and Andreasen will miss at the beginning.
Right midfield is probably Rosenthal who had many injuries last season but who is fit at the moment. Alternatively Sergio Pinto can play here who has good long shots but who lacks discipline from time to time.

Krzynowek will work on the left midfield side. As we now he tends to do this rather offensive then defensively.

Only Bruggink is fitting perfectly into his position and can let hope some Hannover fans for good matches.

Striker: 5/10

Jan Schlaudraff fights with his groin problems and no one was yet able to find a good solution for his problem. Therefore we will see Mike Hanke and Jiri Stajner in front.

Mikael Forssell will start on the bench and owns the joker role once again.

I think Hecking would not say no if anyone would offer him new strikers, improvable but better than the rest of the team parts.

Total: 5/10

My prognosis:

Hannover will have real problems with this team. Many injuries during preparation and the lack of quality will cause some problems for them.

If they have a good season as a team they may get into the single-digit positions, but it is more likely that they will end up close to relegation positions or even sit on one of them at the end of the season.