We didn't see this coming, and not only because of the fog of pyro lingering over the RheinEnergieSTADION field that furnished us with 11 minutes of first-half stoppage time.
If Lukas Kwasniok had known at the start of the season that his side would be sitting in the top eight in the Bundesliga after eight matchdays, he would surely have considered it a great success. The Köln head coach had stressed back then that, as a newly-promoted team, the club should approach the mission of avoiding the drop "humbly" - knowing full well that things could get quite a bit more stormy in Germany's top flight than in the previous Bundesliga 2 season.