Augsburg 2019/20 season preview

bundesliga.com takes a closer look at what to expect from Die Fuggerstädter...

Aims for 2019/20

Survival is the priority for Augsburg in their ninth successive season of Bundesliga football. The Bavarians sailed dangerously close to the wind in 2018/19, despite holding Bayern Munich to a 1-1 draw at the Allianz Arena and beating Borussia Dortmund 2-1 on home soil.

Manuel Baum paid for Augsburg's hot-and-cold form with his job, and it was his successor Martin Schmidt who managed to get the club over the survival line after overseeing two wins and one draw from their final six games of the campaign.

Augsburg finished just four points clear of the relegation play-off spot in the end, although you do wonder how much better off they might have been had 10-goal top scorer Finnbogason not missed 16 league games through injury.

Former Freiburg goal-getter Florian Niederlechner offers an alternative to the injury-plagued Icelander, while Czech international pair, goalkeeper Tomas Koubek and centre-back Marek Suchy, have been brought in with a view to shoring up a defence that shipped a joint-league-high 71 goals across the previous campaign.

Player to watch

Finnbogason will be worth his weight in goals if he can stay fit, but the 30-year-old frontman is not Augsburg's only danger man in the final third.

Richter struck back-to-back braces in games against Eintracht Frankfurt and VfB Stuttgart at the business end of last season - match-winning displays which were the difference between a place in the Bundesliga safe house and the relegation play-offs.

The former Bayern youth player continued his encouraging form at the 2019 UEFA U21 Euros, scoring three and assisting two during Germany's run to the final, and has once again been among the goals for Augsburg in pre-season.

Watch: Marco Richter was a Bundesliga Player of the Month nominee in April 2019

IN: Caiuby (Grasshoppers Zurich, end of loan), Marvin Friedrich (Union Berlin), Carlos Gruezo (FC Dallas), Iago (Internacional), Tomas Koubek (Stade Rennais), Florian Niederlechner (Freiburg), Mads Pedersen (Nordsjaelland), Reece Oxford (West Ham United, loan made permanent), Tim Rieder (Darmstadt, end of loan), Noah Sarenren Bazee (Hannover), Marek Suchy (Basel), Ruben Vargas (FC Luzern)

OUT: Jan-Ingwer Callsen-Bracker (released), Kevin Danso (Southampton, loan), Marvin Friedrich (Union Berlin), Julian Günther-Schmidt (Carl Zeiss Jena, loan made permanent), Martin Hinteregger (Eintracht Frankfurt, loan made permanent), Christoph Janker (released), Dong-Won Ji (Mainz), Gregor Kobel (Hoffenheim, end of loan), Ja-Cheol Koo (Al-Gharafa), Jonathan Schmid (Freiburg), Konstantinos Stafylidis (Hoffenheim), Takashi Usami (Gamba Osaka)

How they might line up

Stadium

The WWK Arena was completed in July 2009 after a 20-month construction project. It has a capacity of 30,660 (19,556 seating, 8,000 standing), but the architects' designs were such that it can still be expanded to 50,000 in a second phase of building if desired.

A complex system that harnesses the earth's natural geothermal energy provides the stadium's power, making it the first CO2-neutral arena in the world, saving approximately 750 million tons of carbon dioxide each year.

The technical aspects of Augsburg's home aside, the steep stands give the venue a compact feel and help create a spine-tingling atmosphere on matchdays, with the noise echoing around the ground. German broadsheet newspaper the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung even once labelled the stadium "The Anfield of the B17 highway" due to its unique atmosphere.