Giants Kaiserslautern suffered a humiliating drop to the Third Tier of German football after spending the majority of the season in last place and offering very little excitement or solid defending in their displays.
Some suspicious transfer activity in the summer and very unconventional tactical choices from coach Norbert Meier made the Red Devils look sluggish and very poor at both ends of the pitch at the start of the campaign. Just 2 goals scored and only 2 points collected from their opening seven games, the Lauterns failed to keep a clean sheet for comparison, saw the logical sacking of Meier coming quick.
Strasser was appointed for round 9 and he celebrated his debut in charge with a seemingly inspiring 3:0 home win over Greuther Furth, but unfortunately injuries to some important players and lack of quality in the squad saw the Lauterns winning only one more game in the nine rounds before the winter break and they finished 2017 already looking doomed as the gap to safety was in double digits.
Strasser made three promising winter signings to try and achieve the impossible, but it seemed that the gods were against Kaiserslautern too as in the opening game of 2018 the coach suffered a heart attack during the halftime talk and he had to leave his job, making Frontzek’s urgent appointment the third coach of the team.
The Frontzek-effect brought 4 wins in the opening 8 games of 2018, impressive compared to the just 2 successes in the opening 18 rounds, but as the other 4 matches during this stretch were lost Kaiserslautern remained hopelessly adrift.
The one final push came at the start of April when a home draw vs. Jahn Regensburg and inspiring 4:1 away win against Duisburg moved the Lauterns within four points from avoiding direct relegation, but what followed were three consecutive defeats between rounds 30 and 32, which confirmed the fact that one of the biggest clubs in Germany would finish bottom of Bundesliga 2.
