Wilkommen back to Leipzig for the final time. Nick and his German champions are firmly in the latest title race, but after an unexpected slip-up in their last European game, their last group game is now a must-win. Can they get the job done?…

This was the lay of the land before the winter break, two points behind Bayern with a game in hand, which is good. The break itself was pretty uneventful other than Real Madrid tabling a bid in excess of £18m for Carrete (Bakero), which I swiftly rejected.

It’s rare that a game against an Armenian side is considered huge, but thanks to Celtic and their grey keeper, that’s the reality. But the hoops did us a massive favour and beat Man Utd just before Christmas, and we brush Ararat aside to top the group and book our place in the quarter finals.

Our prize is Inter Milan, which isn’t great, but it could have been Barcelona…

We resume our title defence with a routine win over Cottbus and almost keep a rare clean sheet. Bayern drew at Cologne so we’re level on points with them now. Game on!

We come from behind to beat Hamburg in our midweek game in-hand. I was relieved when Baumgart went off injured as they were on top at that point and everything was going through him. We’re now three points clear.

Schalke are being their usual selves and frustrating us, but the iceman comes on and unsettles them, allowing Clausen to grab a late brace to take all three points.

Due to some rearrangement, we face Hamburg again and it’s a huge away win despite a late scare when they seemingly pulled a goal back, but thankfully it was disallowed.

Amazingly I’ve had to wait until February for my first manager of the month award…

Back to Europe, and the first thing I do is see if Ronaldo is fit, which thankfully he’s not, and he’ll miss both legs with a torn hamstring. Despite our best efforts, it’s a stalemate and we leave the San Siro with no away goals.

Back in Germany It’s a tough afternoon against 1860 and looking like a draw, but our prayers are answered with a Jens Nowotny red card. Leonidas despatches the resulting penalty and we never look back. Hamburg beat Bayern to send us six clear, f*cking come on!!!

I’m not normally one to single players out, but all is going well against Inter in the second leg until Duncan’s an idiot and gets sent off. Inter score from the resulting free kick to send us out, and it’s now all efforts on the league.

The international break is a brutal one, and we lose Tobiasen for six weeks, Clausen for a month, and Hedman for a couple of weeks…

We sneak a nervy win at Stuttgart as Ziegner grabs his chance at a start with both hands only to go off injured 20 minutes later. We hold on though, and Bayern win the Munich derby to keep the pressure on.

Dynamo Dresden are swept aside by Suker II and Leonidas and the good news keeps coming as Bayern lose to Stuttgart and we’re now nine points clear, which will come in handy as we still have Dortmund and Bayern left to play.

We run riot at Bielefeld as the iceman hits a hat trick to give his confidence a much-needed boost. We can even afford to concede twice in the second half without things getting Grimm.

You know it’s a good day when you give the usually-awkward Bochum a smashing and limit them to just one shot on target in the whole match…

We catch Dortmund before they’ve chance to settle but they battle back and it’s another draw. But Bochum do us a massive favour and hold Bayern, so our nine-point lead is still intact with just four games left to go!

Hedman’s season and career ends with a broken leg. Speedy recovery, Jesp…

Düsseldorf are put to the sword with four first half goals, half of which come from Clausen on his return from injury, and I take back everything I said about Christophe Revault as he helps Dortmund beat Bayern to hand us our second league title. You f*cking beauty!!!

With the title in the bag, Freiburg are given a frying in the first of three meaningless games, and Bayern go and lose at Düsseldorf, and are overtaken by Dortmund, extending our lead to fourteen points…

But despite winning just one of their last four games and playing utter shite lately, Bayern still manage to beat us and end our unbeaten run of eighteen games. This game doesn’t half make me f*cking laugh sometimes…

We finish the season and indeed the blog with a comfortable home win over Karlsruhe, while Bayern and Dortmund both draw to make our final winning margin thirteen points…

So here’s confirmation of that winning margin in the final table. Being top scorers is nothing new with the 2-3-1-2-2, and normally the goals conceded column is a sorry sight, but this season only three teams have conceded less…

One last lot of player stats for the Stattos among you. Clausen’s 31 goals were enough to make him Bundesliga top scorer, and in case you were wondering, Lieftink, Vilhjalmsson, and Gudnason’s values are ridiculously low because their contracts expire very soon…

I’m ending the blog before June because I simply can’t bear to see any of my prize assets get released. Here’s proof that the whole squad were on wages of £8,000 per week or under…

And to finish, a look at our league finishes since the very start. Our first season in the Bundesliga was frankly a disaster, but we never finished outside the top four after our second promotion…

So that’s it, the cock and red bull story is complete! We started with four players and no money in the second division, and ended up with back to back Bundesliga titles!

I’ve really enjoyed this blog, having some rules to follow makes it more of a challenge and more enjoyable, and I’d like to thank you all for reading, I hope you’ve enjoyed it too.

I’m taking a bit of a break from blogging now as I haven’t really stopped since the beginning of Basque Boys, which was about two and a half years ago, but I am working on a little project and hope to do a blog about it when it’s finished, so keep your eyes out for that. See you all soon. Tschüss!