Five Conclusions From Matchday 12

By: Jan | November 8th, 2011

Those were 150.000 Euros not well spent for Wolfsburg. Felix Magath loaned Aliaksandr Hleb from Barcelona for a special €100k per game and €50k per goal fee. Thus, Magath’s total expenses for Saturday’s trip to Dortmund added up to €150k, not counting the damage Dortmund’s fresh in form offense caused all afternoon. Dortmund aren’t quite in Bayern Munich home game territory, but they are finally starting to put away more of all those chances they are creating.

Lucien Favre returned to Berlin with no hard feelings and one Marco Reus. Michael Preetz still had sore feelings left over from Lucien Favre’s awkwardly strange farewell press conference. And he made those feelings known to the local tabloids. Lucien Favre however, kept only the good memories, and felt like returning to some good old acquaintances. One of the bad memories he didn’t keep, was when he didn’t sign Marco Reus for a bargain €1m from RW Ahlen. Reus signed for Gladbach instead and now added a match-winning brace against Hertha to the good memories Lucien Favre will keep from his Gladbach days.

Pizarro won the battle of the two Messi’s. Bremen’s season has been defined by Claudio Pizarro. Cologne’s season has been defined by Lukas Podolski. Both define their clubs like Lionel Messi defines Barcelona. At least that’s what Klaus Allofs and Stale Solbakken think of their respective players. Going head-to-head Lukas Podolski narrowly lost out, losing one goal and one assist to Pizarro’s fourth Bundesliga hattrick. It was a somewhat distorted result though, thanks to a somewhat distorted vision by referee Michael Weiner, who had different ideas about what constitutes a penalty and a red card on either side of the pitch.

Christmas came early for Schalke. Schalke used the tried and trusted FC Bayern strategy of signing players who score a couple of goals against you. In case of Teemu Pukki (feel free to translate Pukki to get my super clever pun) they did it just days after they made his acquaintance in the Europa League. Now another Europa League team made his acquaintance too, particularly Ron Robert Zieler, who had one of his less than stellar days.

Augsburg, once again, came agonizingly close. As things stand, Bayern will win the Bundesliga and Augsburg will get relegated. The two foregone conclusions of this season since day one, according to the usual mob of pundits, are backed up by results like Sunday’s encounter between the biggest richest and the smallest poorest team of the league. Bayern narrowly won that one with an average performance. In season’s where Bayern tend to do so, they indeed win the league. Teams that tend to lose all those matches, as Augsburg repeatedly did this season, get indeed relegated.