Hamburg on the verge of promotion, Struber & Anfang among five coaches sacked - April in the 2. Bundesliga

The past month of 2. Bundesliga football has been full of surprises, sackings and crazy scorelines. With now just two games to go, both the promotion race and survival battle remain wide open.

Hamburger SV top the table and are now closer than ever before to the Bundesliga return they crave. Yet it has not been plain sailing for the Hanseatic club who have characteristically made things hard for themselves.

HSV’s first wobble was a catastrophic 4-2 loss at home to Braunschweig, only their second defeat under Merlin Polzin’s management - fortunately for them, no other top five side won that weekend. They followed with a draw against a poor Schalke, and then lost again to Karlsruhe but again, nobody could capitalise - none of the top six managed to win, and HSV held on to second place.

HSV bounced back to beat Darmstadt 4-0 this weekend, putting them top again ahead of their final home game next Saturday night, with Köln dropping back to second after a draw with Regensburg. Hamburg can secure promotion in their final home game against Ulm on Saturday night but may be effectively up before they even kick off, if other results go their way earlier that day.

Slip ups from Magdeburg and Paderborn - including a 5-0 defeat for FCM at home to Münster on Friday - mean that SV Elversberg have climbed into third place. Nobody has picked up more points since the start of April than Elversberg, who are unbeaten in their last six despite a run of tough fixtures against other promotion candidates. Paderborn are fourth, and play fifth-placed Magdeburg next week in a must-win game for both.

Behind them, Düsseldorf, Hannover, Kaiserslautern and Karlsruhe all remain in the fight, but will likely need two wins from two in order to have a chance of making the playoff.