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5 Football Facts That You Wouldn't Believe If We Told You Back In August

Mikey Traynor
By Mikey Traynor
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This football season has already had a crazy amount of shock upsets, random hammerings, and general insanity.

Back in August if we told you some of the things that have happened so far were going to happen, you would have laughed in our faces and called us all sorts of names.

Here are just five of those football facts that seemed impossible to think of just three months ago.

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Germany were the reigning World champions and were going to finish top of our Euro 2016 qualifying group with maximum points having beaten everyone home and away. Or so everyone thought back in August. In reality, they have had a poor start to the group and were perhaps complacent after claiming the biggest prize in football, and they didn't see John O'Shea and the boys in green snatching a vital point at the death in Gelsinkirchen. Neither did we to be fair.


Real Madrid had big expectations coming into the season as European champions, and having signed World Cup star James Rodriguez, but nobody expected them to absolutely bang the goals in left, right, and centre in record breaking fashion. Similarly, Barca underwent big changes to their defensive personnel, but have managed to break records for their water-tight defending in the first part of the La Liga season.


Seen as the only possible competition to Bayern's domestic dominance, many thought Dortmund would suffer after losing Robert Lewandowski to their bitter rivals, but nobody saw the complete capitulation that saw them stuck in the relegation zone in Germany until this past weekend. A fact that is even more bizarre considering their perfect record in the Champions League group stages.


After losing Adam Lallana, Ricky Lambert, Dejan Lovren, Luke Shaw, Callum Chambers, and their manager Mauricio Pochettino, some tipped Southampton for a relegation dogfight, instead, they are in title form and look on pace to compete for a Champions League spot.

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Louis Van Gaal and new signings Angel Di Maria and Radamel Falcao were supposed to put the gloomy days of last season behind Manchester United, and while there are clear signs of progress and injuries have riddled their defence, United have struggled early on and amassed less points than at the start of David Moyes' ill-fated campaign.

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