I'll start with the teams we played in pre-season. Darmstadt have enjoyed a good start to the season, winning both their opening games and scoring five goals in the process. Kaiserslautern lost their opening game but won their televised clash against Schalke thanks to a debatable penalty. I wasn't very impressed by them but it's early days.

In the fourth-level Regionalliga Südwest, Stuttgarter Kickers have also won two out of two, including an impressive win against promotion favourites SV Sandhausen. So a positive start, but that league is a bit of a shark tank and only one team goes up.

So all in the garden is rosy? Not quite. SV Waldhof Mannheim, i my view Germany's coolest club by far, have supplied plenty of drama and the parallels to Notts are unnerving sometimes. The club appointed a young coach six games before the end of last season and just about squeaked to third division safety. However, this coach (let's call him Dominik) was already under contract at another club as a youth coach from July onwards. Hence, Waldhof spent most of the summer in negotiations to release Dominik from his contract there (during which time barely a handful of players arrived) and ended up paying a transfer fee for him. A six-figure sum was rumoured; not bad for an under-19s coach.

Two league games and one point later, Dominik had managed to fall out with the DoF, the club's best striker and the long-serving club captain (who departed) and was sacked. He was replaced by the head coach of the Luxembourg national team the following day. On the plus side, the solid goalkeeper they let go has been replaced by a tall Dutch bloke, so what could possibly go wrong?

What do PON members think about the implications for Clubs & Fans around the World & in the UK. Is it a good or bad thing?