Fried Hamburgers in Veltins Beer flavored Sauce (?)

Well, that sucked. This team is... very frustrating. Most everyone finds their team to be frustrating, so I'm not gonna just complain about it too much. Let's instead delve into what is happening in this team.
A lot of great comments on the most recent thread - apologies for being a poor blogger. If anyone is interested in writing any posts, feel free to! I have run into a wall of just constantly being busy and even missing some games.
That being said, I did see the Schalke game. It was torturous of HSV to go ahead early and having the dreams of Europe dancing in our heads. But after that, it was the same old same old of how Hamburg has run under Fink. Let's look at the common denominators of his tactics:

Bratwursts 9, Beef patties 2

I feel like changing the names of Bayern Munich and Hamburg to those various meats actually makes the headline less ridiculous. In reality:
Bayern 9, Hamburg 2.
The amount of times I've even played a competetive FIFA match that have reached nine goals are low. How the HELL DID THIS HAPPEN

Ok, let's ...

Marching On

HSV put in a relatively decent performance against Stuttgart, with a very notable performance by Rene Adler, and an absolute screamer of a volley by Artjoms Rudnevs that confirmed Hamburg's 1-0 victory.
With the victory, HSV find themselves in a Europa League spot, and surprisingly enough just one point out of ...

HSV Stinks and Is the Worst Team in the League

Hamburg crumbled like a burger before being cooked - raw and mushily off the plate of Hannover, and splattered on the ground forming the face of Rene Adler.
That being said, the scoreline (5-1) was WAY worse than it needed to be. Mostly, because it could have been like 6-3 or ...

Thorsten Fink: The Chef of a Complicated Burger

Hugely Important Victory
Hamburg registered a tight, fairly equal victory over fellow Europe-hopefuls Borussia Mönchengladbach via an absolute rocket from the talented left foot of Rafael Van der Vaart. Other than that, it was a tale of two halves - Hamburg dominated in the first, BMG faired much better in the second. Hamburg cemented 6th place, tied for 5th on points with Hamburg, and finish the weekend three points out of a tie for the final champions league spot. With hopes for Europe no longer being easily dismissed as 'never gonna happen', Fink thundered this quote about the situation: "We are still not ready for Europe."

Hamburg is clearly better than Dortmund

What else needs to be said? Fink's countering of Klopp's tactics are fantastic with his high pressuring of their centerbacks so they cannot build out of the back, and the attacking-minded approach that many teams do not have the courage to try.
Now, all of the sudden, Hamburg are an up ...

Hamburgers Devoured by Sausages

Hamburg blew a nice chance to move up to 5th place by losing at home, 2-0, to Armin Veh's swashbuckling Frankfurt. Hamburg had about a million chances to at least get one back, especially in the second half, but ultimately a nice performance by Kevin Trapp and some sloppy defending ...

Crazy Derby Days

Hamburg against Bremen is often an exciting dual, but this one was particularly crazy! Two red cards, several controversial referee decisions and five goals all packed into ninety minutes of delicious Hamburg victory. Heung Min Son had a delightful game (his Traumtor aided by a shockingly bad Selassie and a ...

A Somewhat Frustrating Draw

Just when I really start to get annoyed by this Fink era Hamburg side, and right whenever I really start to question whether or not Fink can be realistically trusted to guide this side to European football in the coming years, this team kicks it up a notch and pulls me back on Fink's side. This weekend's game was a microcosm of that - the team ran out for the first half looking entirely unprepared for a Bundesliga match. Everything looked too quick for them, they had no idea how to pass, and no idea how to retain possession. Tolgay Arslan looked entirely overwhelmed, and did one of his frustrated tackles that could very well have lead to a red card, and was rightfully substituted in the first half. Not to mention that shortly after that, Michael Mancienne went down with an injury, and so Fink had to use two of his three subs just in the opening 45 minutes.

Hamburgers Given Heartburn by Aspirins

Leverkusen is Good
A game which inspired an awful headline for this blog can only have been equally as awful. A 3-0 drubbing by a talented and organized Leverkusen side is not exactly embarrassing, but it's very close to it. Stefan Kießling and Andre Schürrle each gave Hamburg a nightmare they won't soon forget, and their combination (along with some help from Gonzalo Castro) scored or assisted all three goals.

Hamburg were repeatedly ripped apart on defense, and Heiko Westermann flatly had an awful game, including gifting Kießling the third goal. I've made it clear that I love a 4-3-3 (or 4-3-1-2) formation, and a brilliant 4-3-3 is what Hyppia and Lewandowski use. It seemed like HSV had never seen such a thing before, and looked entirely unprepared to be honest. Leaving Badelj as essentially the only holding midfielder against three forwards was something our beloved Croat could only muster for so long before looking visibly gassed. Rudnevs did manage to hit a decent shot from distance early on and then later hit the post on a fine header, and Son looked dangerous from a couple of shots from distance as well, but other than that there wasn't a ton of offense going on. Aogo  somehow managed to miss a goal from like five feet after Rudnevs' post shot, and was in general horrible (remember that terrible backpass early on that Schürrle could only hit the post on?). Lam looked overpowered against a better crop of players, and Skjelbred and Diekmeier were equally as listless.