Bundesliga Preview

If you really want to know who will win the Bundesliga this season, you shouldn't read any further, and instead go and buy the kicker season preview and look for the team finishing 10th. That team should have a good chance to win the league because the team finishing 10th in kicker's season preview last season was Stuttgart and we all know how it ended. Since I'm no expert like the friends of kicker but I'm just a regular Bundesliga viewer, here's my own biased prediction(according to Kant, no opinion is with bias, so I'm just being honest).

Champions: Bayern Munich

There's absolutely no way Bayern Munich will not win the league. They have signed a player way too good for the German Bundesliga in Franck Ribery, who so far has just been absolutely sensational and will probably play a football this season never seen before by any player in the Bundesliga. They have also made other good signings in Altintop, Luca Toni and they have ruined their league rival Werder Bremen's team by buying their best striker Miroslav Klose. So all in all, Bayern have the team for the title and nothing should really stop them.
There are just two little pieces that might make the race closer than it's supposed to be: One is their central defense with Van Buyten and Lucio, the other Ottmar Hitzfeld.
Anyone who saw 10 Bayern games last season and the understanding between the two should know about the first. For what it's worth, Van Buyten and Lucio get together like Yoko Ono and Paul McCartney or Steve Jobs and Windows or Ghalenoie and a 5000 pieces 3D-puzzle of the Empire State Building. It somehow doesn't work and I personally don't see it work this season either. However, the rest of the team is too good and even the rest of the defense is excellent with Lahm and Jansen and also Bayern have no other competition to really care for, or pretend to care for, as winning the UEFA-Cup might just not be a top priority for them.
The second obstacle might just be Ottmar Hitzfeld. You may ask yourself why in God's name I see the most succesful German coach in recent history, the 2 Champions League, 100 league titles and other trophies man as an obstacle. Ottmar somehow doesn't belong to this time of football, but is more a relict of the 90s, like Skypagers, Walkmans, and Beverly Hills 90210. Ottmar is the man who in a knock-out game where he needs a draw will field a midfield consisting of 4 defensive players, like he did against Milan as an example. This worked maybe well in the 90s, but in today's world it doesn't work. Either way, he is still too good of a coach to blow this, and I personally think that even Amir Ghalenoie would have less trouble with this Bayern puzzle, than with the Empire State puzzle.

The best of the rest: Schalke, Hamburg, Leverkusen, Stuttgart

These 4 teams should play for the 2 Champions League spots and the 2 Uefa-Cup spots. Hamburg have on paper a very very strong team, as almost half of the Dutch national team plays for them. Further, they seem to have solved their problem of last season and signed a great goalscorer in Mohammad Zidan to add to the already quiet good Ivica Olic. Romeo Castelen should be a good replacement for Mehdi Mahdavikia and if Captain Van der Vaart remains healthy, they will have the second best player of the league after Ribery, plus probably the best defense. Further, last season they were under the new coach Huub Stevens one of the strongest team in the 2nd part of the season. All in all, this means that Hamburg will challenge for a top spot.
Likewise Schalke should have a run for the top5. They haven't made any spectacular signings, but their team was good enough last season, so they didn't really need it. However, I personally see them outside of the Champions League finishing 4th or 5th, but still, they will make the race tight.
Stuttgart have made some great signings that should make them able to cope with the Champions League season and not lose too much energy. They have signed Ewerthon, Gledson and the brilliant Yildi Bastürk, giving the team a lot of depth from the bench. However, they shouldn't quite be a challenge for Bayern. But this team is not for now, it's for the future and if Veh and Heldt continue their job and somehow manage to keep the squad together, they should have one of the major European forces to deal with in the future.
Last but not least, Bayer Leverkusen should have a good season again too. Their squad has great quality, they have made good signings in Gekas and Arturo Vidal and overall, the top5 should be theirs.

Survival of the fittest

Just like last season, a lot of teams will have trouble with relegation and unfortunately, two Iranian players should be involved. Mehdi Mahdavikia and Frankfurt should have problems to a lesser extent and I predict them to finish on a secure 11th or 12th place in the end of the season, but Hansa Rostock and Amir Shapourzadeh will have to fight until the end to play another season in the league. Their benefit might just be, that they have a good mixture of experienced and young players, and at least 3 teams will probably be weaker than them, namely Cottbus, Duisburg and probably Bielefeld.
Fortunately for Vahid Hashemian, his team Hannover won't have any problems with relegation whatsoever but instead should play for an UEFA-Cup spot. Unfortunately for him however, he will get very little playing time.
A team that will also face a lot of problems this season is Hertha BSC, who have sold almost all players who were half decent and are still not finished with putting their team together for the new season, and have also a new coach, who is pretty good, but still. Hertha will play against relegation too, but they might just make it.

And just to be absolutely bold, here's how I predict the table at the end of the season:

1.Bayern Munich
2.Stuttgart
3.HSV
4.Schalke
5.Leverkusen
6.Werder Bremen
7.Dortmund
8.Hannover 96
9.VfL Wolfsburg
10.Nuremberg
11.Eintracht Frankfurt
12.VfL Bochum
13.Karlsruher SC
14.Hertha Berlin
15.Hansa Rostock
16.MSV Duisburg
17.Arminia Bielefeld
18.Energie Cottbus