Pre-Season Preview: 1. FC Nurnberg

Manager Dieter Hecking has one of the grimmest season’s ahead of him with a depleted Nurnberg squad. After the losses of key players during the summer and a failure to replenish the squad, Hecking and Nurnberg could very well be heading for 2. Bundesliga by the end of the season.

Key Players

The problem with this category for Nurnberg, is that they’ve practically lost all of their key players this summer to loan returns and transfers out of the club. Breno and Andreas Ottl have gone back to Bayern Munich, Dennis Diekmeier has been sold to Hamburg, Havard Nordtveit has returned to Arsenal, and Maxim Choupo-Moting has moved back to Hamburg after a season-long loan. These players were really the core of what was only an average Nurnberg side last season. Now, without these players, the situation at Hamburg is really quite grim.

Despite all that, I’d say the one player Nurnberg may be able to pin their hopes of survival this season on is Isaac Boakye. Are you thinking what I’m thinking? You probably are. He’s not really a player you want to place the survival of a club in. But honestly, Nurnberg really have very little by way of classy players. They could very well be whipping boys this year.

Newcomers

Here’s a glimmer of hope. Timmy Simons has joined the club from PSV, and he could really help this really hopeless looking Nurnberg side survive this season. They probably won’t, even with Simons. But it’s all possible at the moment. Simons will add a real defensive ability to the spine of the team, adept at center-half and in the midfield in a defensive role. Simons’ experience and positional sense will provide at least a little bit of stability to what will be a very rickety backline this season.

Expectations

Relegation. Sorry Nurnberg fans, there’s nothing that suggests survival to me with this squad. After only staying up last season by way of a play-off, I can’t see them repeating that feat with a squad who have lost more than they’ve gained over the summer.