By Eskender Tamrat@eskeFussball

Bulinews Player of the Season Awards: FC Augsburg’s Player of the Season

Alexis Claude-Maurice is FC Augsburg’s Bulinews Player of the Season by winning exactly half of the votes from a team of 10 writers.

Alexander Hassenstein/Getty Images

In a season one of the ever-present Bundesliga clubs got relegated to the second division, Augsburg cracked a top ten finish for the first time in over a decade. Their ninth-placed finish is the best return by the Bavarians since Markus Weinzierl led them to Europa League participation during his first spell.

Manuel Baum was Weinzierl’s replacement back then, and he returned to the club this term after a turbulent start to the campaign under Sandro Wagner. Thanks to their strong end to the season, the 46-year-old interim coach has now signed a permanent deal until the end of the 2027/28 season.

Alexis Claude-Maurice is one of the reasons behind Augsburg’s resurgence. The attacking midfielder came second to Finn Dahmen in our voting process last season. He has now comfortably beaten the shot-stopper, despite scoring four goals fewer than his debut campaign. Augsburg might want to cash in on the 27-year-old this summer before he runs down his contract at the end of next season.

STANDOUT PERFORMANCE:

After missing the first two games with an ankle injury, Claude-Maurice ended Hinrunde with zero direct goal involvement. Things changed after the winter break as he netted in back-to-back draws against Union Berlin and Freiburg. Including the Hoffenheim game where he missed a penalty-kick that would have been a winning goal, the Frenchman scored the opener on four different occasions.

Just like the number of votes he had from Bulinews writers (5/10), he found the net five times. All of his goals came in front of home support at WWK Arena, where they have only lost to Stuttgart since matchday nine. Although there was no equivalent to his sensational treble at Borussia-Park last season, Claude-Maurice added four assists to his tally in wins over eventually relegated St. Pauli and Wolfsburg.

HONOURABLE MENTIONS:

Fabian Rieder had a far better time in Augsburg than his loan spell at Stuttgart, and he won two votes in our end of season voting to finish in second place. The rest of the votes goes to Dahmen , German-American Noahkai Banks and Michael Gregoritsch. The latter finished as club's top-scorer (6) alongside Rieder and youngster Anton Kade despite only re-joining Augsburg in the winter transfer window.