Your vote: Bayern to top table after Matchday 1
Munich - The votes are in and users of bundesliga.com are tipping FC Bayern Munich to be making the running right from the off once again in 2013/14.
Bayern and BVB battling it out again
43 percent of those who voted reckon the defending champions will be top of the table come the end of Matchday 1 - indicating they anticipate a fairly clear-cut outcome in the Friday evening (9 August, kick-off 20:30 CET) curtain-raiser for the Bundesliga's 51st season, when Borussia Mönchengladbach are the visitors at the Allianz Arena.
Should it work out like that, it will be the best of all possible starts in Germany's top flight for new head coach . Gladbach, however, are unbeaten on their last two trips to Munich, sharing the spoils there last season and, back in 2011 - also on Matchday 1 incidentally - giving Jupp Heynckes an afternoon to forget in his first game back in the Bayern hot seat as they headed west again with all three points in the bag, courtesy of Igor de Camargo's winner.
That recent record may have been borne in mind by some of the 37 percent of ballotters going for Borussia Dortmund as the team most likely to be out in front come the end of the weekend action. Jürgen Klopp's Yellow-Blacks are playing away at FC Augsburg on Saturday afternoon (kick-off 15:30 CET), where they racked up a 3-1 win last season - although that was when the men from Bavarian Swabia were seriously struggling for form, whereas they looked a stronger proposition altogether in the latter stages of the campaign.
Outside bets?
Between them, then, Germany's 2013 UEFA Champions League finalists scooped up 80 percent of the vote, with FC Schalke 04 and Eintracht Frankfurt trailing well in their wake on five percent apiece, just ahead of Bayer 04 Leverkusen. Clearly, though, given that it is the opening matchday and thus an effective one-off, the potential is there for any of the 18 teams to catch a good day and plant themselves at the head of the standings, however briefly.
So will it be one of the big two, in line with the prognosis, one of the ambitious pretenders aiming to challenge at the top this season - or a surprise package few had reckoned with? In the ultra-competitive Bundesliga anything is possible: all will be revealed over the August 9-11 weekend, when the action finally gets underway in earnest.
