Fortuna Düsseldorf vs Heidenheim Match Preview

“The Club” want to continue the uptrend
13.09.2014, 11:46by Urs Bruder
Preview and betting-tip: Two former German champions will face in the 2. Bundesliga on Monday evening (20:15 CET). The 1. FC Nürnberg and Fortuna Düsseldorf are both regarded as serious promotion candidates, still both made a bad start to the season but both could win the last match impressively. This thrilling encounter can be seen live on german Free-TV at Sport1.   

Our prediction
1. FC Nürnberg
Nürnberg wins
1. FC Nürnberg

They signed 19 new players, most of them of high quality, therefore the relegated 1. FC Nürnberg went as top favourites into the new 2. Bundesliga season. But the ‘Club’ had a terrible start. They could only narrowly beat Erzgebirge Aue 1:0 at home in the first match, lost the very important local derby against Greuther Fürth 1:5 afterwards and then even lost 0:1 at home against the FSV Frankfurt. In this situation the following 4:0 away win at Union Berlin was of extreme importance for the whole club, the new coach Valérien Ismaël and of course the confidence of the team. Nürnberg had signed two new players before that match, Ondrej Celustka (Trabzonspor) and Daniel Candelas (Benfica), both played from the beginning and now offer Ismaël several new tactical opportunities. Captain Jan Polak as well as goalkeeper Raphael Schäfer will return from injuries for the Monday match.
Fortuna Düsseldorf

Also Fortuna Düsseldorf did not have a good start to the season, had to wait until the fourth match day until they managed the first victory at bottom side Erzgebirge Aue (3:0). Animated by the experienced Axel Bellinghausen, who had returned from injury, they gave an enhanced performance in Aue, but still missed too many chances, also did not really stand safe in the back again. Fortuna have a team that should be able to play for promotion, they have high quality particularly up front, but the conversion of chances is not very good at the moment. Also the new signed central key player Sérgio Pinto has not found to form yet and with Andreas Lambertz another important midfielder became injured last week. Düsseldorf loaned central defender Jonathan Tah (18) from the Hamburger SV at the end of August. With Heinrich Schmidtgal and Adam Bodzek two other defenders return from injuries.
Expected line-ups