Mattersburg entered the new season in a fine mood after showing top four form after being taken over by Gerald Baumgartner in the second half of the 2016/17 season.
The Burgerlanders collected four points from their opening two games, but what followed was a ten-game winless run during which Baumgartner's position came into question, with only St.Polten's abysmal form preventing the Burgerlanders from dropping to the bottom of the campaign.
However, Mattersburg improved after the shaky start and started to get better and better as time elapsed. A big reason for their revival was the emergence of on-loan striker Smail Prevljak, who was not even a regular starter in the early stages of the season but finished the campaign with a goal tally bettered only by Salzburg's Munas Dabbur and Sturm's Deni Alar.
With St.Polten being as poor as they were, there was never really any genuine threat of Mattersburg finishing bottom, but there was still a glimmer of hope that they could finish fifth and qualify for Europe. With their form getting gradually better, they managed to keep their European hopes alive late in the season, but had them ended with three games left to play after playing out a 1:1 draw at Admira in a game in which they had the better of things.
All in all, it was a reasonably good season for Mattersburg but the big question now is how they will replace the goal output of Prevljak, who will be back with his parent club next season.
