After only three weeks of the new Bundesliga season, no teams have a 100% record, showing how this season could be harder to predict. So far we have seen how anyone can beat anyone, with a number of shock results already, especially on the opening weekend when favourites, Bayern Munich lost at home to Borussia Mönchengladbach. The 2010/2011 champions, Borussia Dortmund started with a comfortable win at home, picking up where they left off from last season, but struggled to repeat that performance away at Hoffenheim, going down to a 1-0 defeat.
This season the teams that will be challenging for the Bundesliga title, would be likely to be between, Bayern Munich, Bayer Leverkusen and last seasons champions Borussia Dortmund. As usual Bayern Munich have got a very strong squad and will always be a threat, also Bayer Leverkusen have had a good start with wins against Stuttgart and Werder Bremen and have players with a great deal of experience, such as Michael Ballack.
For Borussia Dortmund the challenge they will face is managing to compete in the Bundesliga whilst being involved in the Champions League, which will test the strength of their squad.
Outsiders for a title challenge this season, would be teams like Schalke, Werder Bremen and Stuttgart, who all had disappointing finishes last season,but have begun well and have shown that they all have high quality attacks. The two teams who began the season the brightest were Hannover and Mainz who started with two wins, but both slipped up in their recent home games.
Hannover who had success in other competitions with wins in the domestic cup and Europe, conceded a late equaliser against newly promoted Hertha Berlin, whereas Mainz, who had finished 5th last season continued their recent good form by taking a two goal lead at half time, but ended up conceding four second half goals to Schalke.
There are a selection of teams that are going to struggle to remain in the league, especially with the start to the season they have had. FC Köln have started very poorly with a high number of goals being scored against them already with the same applying to Hamburg .
Their new looking defence with familiar faces Michael Mancienne and Jeffrey Bruma are struggling to keep teams out and maybe need time to get used to playing together. Another team who could struggle is Freiburg who have yet to win and are likely to lose their best player Papiss Demba Cissé who scores the majority of their goals, meaning they would need to bring in a replacement quickly.
To get a good idea of how the Bundesliga is going to shape up, it will depend on transfers that go through along with how teams cope with a loss of quality players, such as Cissé. Also how teams manage to challenge in the league along with competing in European competitions. A better idea of the positions in the league will be in mid October when the season is well underway and teams have managed to integrate their new players.
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