When all the teams were preparing for the season’s second period during the winter break, the fans were feeling very comfortable and wondering if their fifth placed Bursa would earn a spot for European Cups or not. None of them could have predicted that the Crocodiles were going to achieve survival in the Super League just on the final match day. What happened to the team in 2017 was unbelievable. In 17 fixtures, they could collect only eight points. In fact, the arrival of this terrible run should have been noticed when they failed to defeat a second division team during the cup’s group stage and faced an early exit towards the end of 2016. Neither coach Hamza Hamzaoglu, nor coach Mutlu Topcu could manage to prevent Bursa’s unstoppable terrible run. During this process, the fans reacted to the players a lot. Besides booing during some fixtures, the fans attacked the team bus following a match and some players were manhandled. In order to take some precautions, the board decided to ban some players internally. At the end, they defeated Trabzon on the road and went crazy. During the whole season, they faced many injury problems and suspensions (15 players totally). It is obvious that the fans were not satisfied with the offensive staff’s performance. Because of that, none of the coaches could display any steady line ups. When the Crocodiles won their first and only title in the league, Batalla was the biggest contributor. Once again, he proved why he is the favourite player of the fans as he scored the winning goal in Trabzon on the season’s last fixture. The board have lots of things to do for the next season. They will have to be very active in the summer in order not to face the same nightmare once again.
