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After the announcement of the pre-season friendlies in Germany, which Nick Draper will no doubt be rolling his eyes at, who else is better to ask about how to get around, where to go, and what to see in Germany, than our resident German, Mark Hendrikx? Well, Nena for one. But she wasn’t available. Believe us: we tried. And Boris Becker told us in no uncertain terms to shove it. There are no other famous Germans. So we’re stuck with Hendrikx.

So – it has been announced. Two PSFs in Germany. Kaiserslautern and Kickers Offenbach. Two mouth-watering ties, to be fair.

It is a great shame that Kaiserslautern will not be playing their match at their home stadium, the Fritz-Walter-Stadion, as it is a 49,780 capacity stadium and even though 1.FCK are in the third division in Germany, they still manage to average around 23,000 per home game. Instead, the Official Site told us that the match would be played at the “Weingarten Arena”. This is not to be confused with the Weingarten Arena near Ravensburg in South Germany. This match will be played at SV Weingarten and kick-off is at 7pm CET on Friday, 12 July.

The second match is against Kickers Offenbach. This will be a more tasty atmosphere due to the Sparda-Bank-Hessen-Stadion. A 20,500 capacity stadium, which coincidentally hosts the German National Rugby team’s home matches, averages around 8,500 a home game. Offenbach is directly next to Frankfurt am Main (not to be confused with Frankfurt an der Oder where one Benfica fan accidentally travelled to) and kick-off will be on Saturday 13 July at 3pm CET.

So, folks… if you’ve gotten this far, how about I make a few suggestions of how best to travel?

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You may recognise that as Uhtred’s – Son of Uhtred – catchphrase from ‘The Last Kingdom,’ the third season of which I just happen to be watching now (think a Viking Wagstaff with his magnificent beard). It seems now prescient on the last 10 games since our last review of what history has shown us . . .

In our last article showing us how the past might show us what was going to happen, we showed that historically over the last 10 seasons, the average number of points required to avoid relegation was 49.

Looking at past results, with 10 games to go, it suggested we’d accumulate another 13 points (nine at home; four away) and finish on 46 points, below this threshold.

In reality, we got eight points at home but a massive nine points away. And that is why we are still in League One – our away form again came to our rescue.

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