Hartberg entered the season as the main candidates to go down, having lost their highly-rated manager Christian Ilzer as well as the core of their promotion-winning squad last summer.
Add to that the fact that they spend the majority of their history in the third tier, they looked like a side destined to relegation, but had an excellent season, having ultimately managed to stay up.
Things looked particularly good for them in the first half of the season, as they were playing some outstanding football and spent the majority of the campaign inside the top half.
In fact, they only really slowed down in the second half of the campaign and only their poor form in the early spring season condemned them to a place inside the Relegation Group.
Markus Schopp's men kept struggling during the spring season and ended up being dragged into the battle against the drop, but managed to just edge out Wacker Innsbruck in that battle and avoid the drop by the skin of their teeth.
While their season will be seen as a success on overall, it is clear that they stayed up mostly due to the points they accumulated in the first half of the campaign. Their form since the turn of the year has been very worrying and it remains to be seen if they can reverse that trend.
