The first half of 2011/12 Bundesliga season has offered plenty to suggest it could well be the best yet. With so little to choose between the title challengers at the top and the survival hopefuls down below, there are bound to be many more twists and turns to come as the Bundesliga continues to boom in all departments.

Just four points separate the current top four in the Bundesliga. At the same stage last season the difference between first and fourth place stood at 12 points. The competitiveness of Germany’s top flight also shows in the fact that there have already been six league leaders this season (Bayern, Dortmund, Mönchengladbach, Mainz, Stuttgart, Wolfsburg) - that’s a third of all Bundesliga sides!

At the other end of the table, just six points separate the entire lower third of the league. Even seventh-placed Hannover remain well within the clutches of the dreaded drop zone. So far five different teams have propped up the rest of the division - SC Freiburg (total four weeks), Hamburg (six weeks), 1. FC Köln (three weeks) and Schalke 04 (one week).

Last season was the first to surpass the 100 away wins mark and this season has proven similarly fruitful for visiting sides, with every team winning at least once away from home by Matchday 12 - the first time this has ever happened. Previously there had always been at least one team who went the entire first half of the season without a win on the road.

The current Bundesliga season has produced an average of 2.86 goals per game. There have been 43 fewer than last season in total (438 compared to 481 in 2010/11), but of all Europe’s top leagues, only the Premier League has managed more strikes per match (2.89) with Spain (2.65), France (2.54) and Italy (2.39) all lagging behind. Further to that, there have only been six 0-0 draws this term, while in England and France there have been 12, 17 in Italy’s Serie A and 19 in Spain’s Primera Division.

The 2010/11 campaign was the first since 1989/90 in which no Bundesliga club fielded a side with an average age of over 28. Dortmund held the torch of youth, marching to the title with an average age of just 24.3. Once again the trend has continued this term, with Wolfsburg the ‘golden oldies’ of the league with an average age of 27.3. Hoffenheim, like last season, are the Bundesliga’s babies, averaging just 24.3 years of age.

For the first time in 15 years, seven players have struck double figures within 17 matches this season. Mario Gomez, Klaas-Jan Huntelaar, Lukas Podolski, Claudio Pizarro and Robert Lewandowski have already netted at least 12 - the last time five or more players scored more than a dozen before the halfway stage was way back in the 1976/77 season - 35 years ago!

Just three seasons ago, in 2008/09, only 43 per cent of Bundesliga players were German, a record low at the time. Thankfully for all ‘deutschophiles’, the trend has bucked over the past three campaigns and the current ratio of Germans playing in the top flight is 49 per cent, the highest figure in 11 years. No wonder national team coach Joachim Löw is spoilt for choice.

Last season 16 of the 18 Bundesliga clubs stuck with their coaches throughout the entire campaign. Currently 15 clubs have the same man in charge as at the start of the season (Hertha and Markus Babbel parted ways after Matchday 17). There have also been managerial changes at Hamburg and Schalke 04. For each of the latter, it seems the right decision was made as both continue to progress up the table. Hamburg have climbed from bottom to 13th, while Schalke have hopped from ninth to third.

After setting a new record of 13,051,796 spectators cumulatively (almost 42,700 per match) in 2010/11, the Bundesliga is once again on course to set a new precedent with an average attendance of 45,200 at matches so far this term. This has a lot to do with promoted Hertha’s 70,000-plus capacity Olympiastadion in comparison to relegated St. Pauli’s Millerntor, as well as the fact that Mainz moved into a brand new, larger arena. The Bundesliga is far and away the best-supported league in Europe, with England averaging crowds of 32,812, Spain 26,816, Italy 21,140 and France 17,488.