For yet another season Kaiserslautern disappointed and the Red Devils were involved in the relegation scrape right until the final round when they eventually secured their safety with a minimal 1:0 home win over Nurnberg.
The financial situation of the club didn’t allow their new coach Korkut to strengthen the ranks as much as he wished in the summer and, with just two points collected from the opening five rounds, the pressure was on. For yet another campaign the lack of quality strikers hurt the Red Devils and they struggled for goals all season, with nobody finding the back of the net more than six times during the campaign. The fact that all of Przybylko, Zoua and Osawe missed many games due to injuries or suspensions also didn’t help.
The one thing that kept Kaiserslautern outside the bottom three for pretty much the entire season was their solid defensive form on home turf. The Lauterns enjoyed an eight-game stretch without conceding on home turf that lasted from September until late February and it was the points collected in these fixtures that helped a lot. On the road things were much more difficult for Kaiserslautern and they won just twice away from home during the campaign.
Three consecutive wins in November didn’t prove enough to satisfy with Korkut’s management of the squad and during the winter break he was replaced at the helm by the vastly experienced at this level Norbert Meier. With no money to add new names to the squad in January, the gaffer had to work with what he had and, if nothing else, in 2017 the results were slightly better. Meier lost only two of his first seven games in charge and in late March Kaiserslautern looked like they have secured a mid-table finish, but poor away results late on brought problems.
Marcel Gaus proved to be a real leader for the team and he showed his amazing versatility after playing as left-back, left winger, right winger and inner midfielder throughout the season. The shaky displays remained constant though and even Meier was unable to change them. Back-to-back defeats at the beginning of May suddenly saw Kaiserslautern losing most of their lead over the bottom three and, come the last round, they needed to win to make sure that they would avoid the play-off for remaining in the division.
In 2017 the Lauterns started using with mixed success a formation with three at the back and another central defender playing just in front of them and it seems that this will be the main formation for the new season.
