Philipp Lahm. Bayern’s disappointing draw at home against Schalke. Robben’s moment of madness for which he should have seen a red card. Luca Toni’s early departure from the Allianz Arena. All the possible talking points that Saturday’s game delivered were completely overshadowed by one simple thing: The Truth. Bayern’s reaction: a heavy monetary fine and the promise that Philipp Lahm will be the captain of the team one day.

Michael Skibbe. At the beginning of the season Frankfurt’s new coach tried to breath new life into an old diva, who had dumped drama for fiscal responsibility, a bun and a job in the local library. He did so with an overabundance of positive rhetoric. He talked up the players and the club and promised attractive attacking football. 12 matches later everyone in Frankfurt came to the realization, that they are nonetheless still looking at the same old players, club and football. The humiliating defeat against Leverkusen now prompted Michael Skibbe to swing to the other side of the extreme and start doom mongering. In post match interviews and press conferences he lashed out in all directions. He questioned the quality of the players, the composition of the squad, the scouting, the club and pretty much everything and everybody. He predicted that the club will move backwards if things stay as they are. His outburst and consequently his possible motives left the fans and press in Frankfurt puzzled. Was he looking to provoke his dismissal or preparing his resignation? Skibbe later rejected such suggestions, stating he is happy to be Frankfurt’s coach but that he wants to change things and move the club in the right direction. Frankfurt’s management is so far keeping a low profile and did not comment on Skibbe’s accusations/suggestions. For anyone with a soft spot for clubs living the wallflower life, it’ll interesting to see what happens next in Frankfurt.

Historical Revisionism. In light of recent events, Bayern’s performance in their DFB-Pokal match against Eintracht Frankfurt needs to be re-evaluated. It wasn’t one of Bayern’s best games this season. It was pretty much in line with the other games. After all, Bayern needed a full 14 minutes to score the first goal and another 15 minutes to score two more. 14 minutes into Bayer Leverkusen’s game against Frankfurt, the Werkself was meanwhile ready to call it a day and head to the showers, after Kroos had made it 3-0 in the 11th minute.

History Repeating. It’s a cherished Bundesliga tradition for Bayer Leverkusen to be in an excellent position in the table at this point of a season. In the past, that was always the cue for Bayern Munich to ground the perennial runner-ups with a humbling defeat, to remind them of their place in the Bundesliga food chain. Bayer’s visit to the Allianz Arena in two weeks should give us a good idea about whether legs will turn to jelly once agin, or whether Jupp Heynckes’ Leverkusen side has what it takes to mount a serious title challenge.

Schalke 04. Schalke are one of the most exciting clubs to follow at the moment. Not because the football is great – it’s not. It’s uninspired, one dimensional and gets the job done. But because you can peek over Felix Magath’s shoulder, as he step by step assembles a new team, fielding Schalke youth teams and promoting talents nobody ever heard about. Whether he manages to build a team with the potential to win the Bundesliga remains to be seen. His foremost task at the moment is to reduce the wage budget and balance the books again.

Referees. It wasn’t a good weekend for decisive offside calls. Bundesliga referees denied three perfectly good goals this weekend. With the situation at the bottom of the table getting more and more serious, that was particularly bad news for Nuremberg and Bochum. Nuremberg were denied a late equalizer against Mainz. Bochum should have taken the lead against Freiburg, but instead were punished with Freiburg’s winning goal in the 90th minute. Hertha meanwhile should have gotten a penalty against Cologne to get a more than deserved equalizer, while Hannover got a PK gift-wrapped to steal a point from Hamburg.

Hamburg’s Sick Bay. Hamburg’s two best strikers are now joined by their indisputably best player: Ze Roberto. A torn ligament will keep him out for at least the next game against Bochum. It threatens to once again become a season for Hamburg fans to contemplate all that could have been if only…

One Step Forward, Two Steps Back. Stuttgart coach Markus Babbel was happy to escape with a draw against Mönchengladbach. He can’t be happy with the lack of progress his team is making.

Hertha’s Plan for the Second Division. They better have one. No team with only 4 points after 12 matchdays has ever escaped relegation. It really saddens me to see what happened to the club and it’s also difficult to comprehend how much bad luck they are stacking up at the moment. Cologne had two shots on goal and some luck with close penalty calls. Hertha pretty much had everything else and lost. It’s safe to say that Hertha in their current shape would not be in such a misery. Hertha sealed their relegation earlier in the season – when the players were busy conspiring against their coach. Games like the one against Cologne are just the cherry on top.

Results: Leverkusen 4-0 Frankfurt, Bayern 1-1 Schalke, Hoffenheim 1-2 Wolfsburg, Bochum 1-2 Freiburg, Mönchengladbach 0-0 Stuttgart, Mainz 1-0 Nuremberg, Hannover 2-2 Hamburger SV, Hertha 0-1 Cologne, Bremen 1-1 Dortmund

“It is a fairy tale that I ban everything. I only ban things that are hurting the team. But when someone comes to me and says he needs ten beers to score a goal, then I lecture him about the risks of alcohol consumption and give him ten beers.”

Schalke’s coach Felix Magath in an interview with Welt Online.

via: Königsblog

Halfway Between the Gutter and the Stars. VfB Stuttgart will host Sevilla in the Champions League on Tuesday and then head off to Hannover for, what is now, a relegation six-pointer. Even if you take the admittedly slight over dramatization out of the equation, Stuttgart still end up facing the worst start to a season in 35 years. This weekend it was Schalke’s task to heap more misery on Markus Babbel, and they duly delivered with a somewhat fortunate 2-1 victory. Look for the upside in the downturn, and you’ll find a much more spirited and courageous display by the Stuttgart players. Sporting director Horst Heldt had spent some time in front of TV cameras reminding the players of their duties and trying to take pressure away from his coach. The latter didn’t quite work out. The team lacks organization, tactical finesse and is overly reliant on players individually running the show up front or at the back. A blunder by Stefano Celozzi gifted Schalke the first goal and a lack of creativity by the likes of Hleb, made it difficult to break down Schalke’s defense. At least Stuttgart have yet another shooting star to look forward to with Julian Schieber, who mildly compensates for transfers which currently and again struggle to deliver.

Cost Control. It ain’t pretty but Schalke are grinding their way to the top. Once having arrived there though, the club faces a fire sale to balance the books again, following years of overly optimistic economic planning ahead. The following season will invariably result in suckage in Europe and something comparable in the league. No wait, that was another club.

The Sick Bay. Another week, another long term injury for a Hamburg player. This time around Romeo Castelen’s troubled knee signaled it may be in trouble once again. The speedy winger is facing a potentially month long injury setback. This is a particularly tragic one, as Romeo Castelen just returned to professional football following a break of almost two years. Hamburg fans now have to look forward in terror to the games against Celtic and Schalke, fearing to lose ever more players.

Louis van Gaal’s Football Philosophy. With one quarter of the season in the books, I think we now have a much clearer picture of the kind of football Louis van Gaal wants to play with Bayern: pass the ball to Müller, who then either scores himself or sets up Freiburg’s Cha Du-Ri for the easy tap-in own-goal.

For a more accurate assessment you might still want to check out the Bayern Offside.

Subs are not Ball Boys. Hannover’s Mario Eggimann had to learn this the hard way after being yellow carded for passing the ball to his goalkeeper while warming up on the sidelines in his team’s 2-1 defeat to Frankfurt.

Desperate, Desolate and Doomed. Hertha.

Spin Doctor. Leverkusen’s coach Jupp Heynckes is an elder statesman type coach, who transcended the idiocy and irrationality of the day to day football business years ago. As such I’ll let him get away with first proclaiming, that we might indeed see a goal fest when his side and Bruno Labbadia’s Hamburg meet given that both stand for attacking football. Just to suggest that he knew it all along, that the game would actually turn out to be a total snoozefest. At this point the resident blogger of the Bundesliga Offside wants to inform you, that I’m also not the least bit surprised about all the things that happened this weekend. I was just too lazy to blog my predictions beforehand.

Minus 7 Goals Later. When Bremen and Hoffenheim met at the Weserstadion last season, the game eventually mutated into an open ended 5-4 goal fest in Bremen’s favor. This time the game mutated into a controlled and confident 2-0 victory in Bremen’s favor. The neutral observer is getting nostalgic. The Werder Bremen fan is looking at a team which is slowly but surely moving itself into a position, where it’s only a matter of time until someone proclaims them as serious title candidates.

Results: Stuttgart – Schalke (1-2), Bremen – Hoffenheim (2-0), Freiburg – Bayern (1-2), Cologne – Mainz (1-0), Frankfurt – Hannover (2-1), Nuremberg – Hertha (3-0), Hamburg – Leverkusen (0-0), Wolfsburg – M’Gladbach (2-1), Dortmund – Bochum (2-0)

Battle Chess. When a commenter on one of Germany’s public broadcasters attempted to summarize and categorize the match between Hamburg and Bayern, he kept talking about this game being for tactic freaks, but with an uncertainty to his statements, as though he didn’t really know what was going on and didn’t want to admit to it. But then again, who does? As such, the first thirty minutes of the match, where Bayern were in control but little else, were mostly used to get to grips with who was playing where, why and how you put that in numbers. At some point a panel of experts agreed on a 3-3-3-1 for Bayern countered by a 4-4-2 diamond by Hamburg, except that Elia was really tripling up the left wing with Aogo and Boateng to put pressure on Breno, while Lahm casually checked by his old friends in Bayern’s back line to take Elia out of the game. All of that produced a high quality 0-0 at half-time and it all no longer mattered when Demel’s injury forced Labaddia to make a slew of positional changes, which accidentally put Louis van Gaal checkmate at the same time – despite van Gaal’s courageous efforts to counter Labbadia by reverting to a 4-3-3. Either that or it was all about a bit of individual brilliance by Ze Roberto and the lack of the same on the other end, that produced the solitary winning goal. So, whether the Bundesliga now has its’ very own Kasparov vs Karpov remains to be seen. Both coaches have a tendency to lose their teams, while they are thinking through their next 37 moves.

In-Jokes. While following the chess game and waiting for Louis to make his next move, I wondered whether coaches have their own way of joking around with each other. I often notice how two coaches have a quick chat after a game or prior to the post match press conference, which usually ends in laughter. In case of Bruno and Louis it would have been like

Bruno: “Got it?”
Louis: “Trochowski?”
Bruno grins, Louis laughs and the press conference begins.

After all Trochowski’s sole role in this game was to fool Bayern and himself into believing Hamburg might actually try anything via the right side. Obviously Labbadia would never admit to that, as it would make Trochowski very angry and tempt him to unleash one of his fiery long range shots at Labbadia, which will go about 10 meters wide.

That’s Clear. As Lucien Favre used to say when he used to be Hertha’s coach. Now he has been fired. Six Bundesliga defeats in a row broke his back on the outside. The team working against him broke him on the inside. The Hertha Offside picks it up from here.

Next in the Line. Borussia Mönchengladbach traded their excellent start to the season and the Juan Arango hype for four defeats in a row and a tough fixture calendar. Anyone who always knew and always doubted the signing of Michael Frontzeck as Gladbach coach may now get an account on a random Borussia Mönchengladbach board or blog and start posting.

Arne Friedrich. When typing Arne Friedrich into the Google searchbox, the service’s automatic search term completion suggests I might primarily be interested in the topics girlfriend, gay or Nutella. I really meant to type dressing room cancer though, but that doesn’t yield any satisfactory results – yet. Still, somehow Friedrich always seems to pop up whenever there’s a rift in a team I have sympathies for. A while back Little Miss Sunshine used Ballack’s shake up with Löw in the German national team, to tell the press how intolerably rude he feels the captain is. Just that he didn’t realize that players aren’t the weakest link and that Ballack is a much better football player than him. In case of Lucien Favre he didn’t realize either that this man knows much more about football than him, but he remembered that bit about who the weakest link is. Now the only question the HSV sympathizer in me has left, is how he managed to get rid of Dietmar Beiersdorfer as well.

Bavarian Beauty. A very average game between two quite evenly matched teams ended 0-0 for Cologne after 80 minutes and 1-0 for Leverkusen after 90 minutes. Leverkusen’s coach Jupp Heynckes felt like he was in Munich all over again: “This is how Bayern won the titles in its’ history: through confidence and believe in its’ own strength”. Whether this will be enough for Bayer against teams with a more mature and fine tuned game (Hamburg, Bayern, Hoffenheim) remains to be seen. The fans will certainly welcome a change to the club’s die in beauty approach of the past.

Dreary Derby. Schalke beat Dortmund 1-0 and I personally was a bit disappointed by the balance between real controversy (none) vs. made up controversy (some) in Germany’s biggest derby.

Results: Nuremberg – Bochum (0-1), Wolfsburg – Hannover (4-2), Dortmund – Schalke (0-1), Bremen – Mainz (3-0), Cologne – Leverkusen (0-1), Frankfurt – Stuttgart (0-3), Hamburg – Bayern (1-0), Freiburg – Mönchengladbach (3-0), Hoffenheim – Berlin (5-1)

With a couple of lazy days during the international week coming up, it’s time to take a look at how season number 47 of the Bundesliga is shaping up so far.

NEW: A slow start to the season.
Last season the Bundesliga stormed out of the gates all guns blazing, racking up an average of 3.11 goals per game after the first four matchdays. The ratio eventually dropped to around 2.92 as the season progressed, but by then the league had already successfully drawn our attention to a small village in southern Germany and eventually to the stories behind all the weekly changing table toppers. This season, we are looking at a rather subdued start with just 2.69 goals per game so far and the realization that Hoffenheim have turned into just another Bundesliga side. But who knows what kind of compelling narratives this season can come up with as we move along. I sure hope it’s better than just telling the story of Rib and Rob(TM) and how they guided Bayern to an undisputed Bundesliga title, made all the more drab by a coach, who already had two humor bypass operations.

SAME: Hamburg’s early season form.
Last season Martin Jol’s Hamburg delivered 10 points and 11 goals in 4 matches, the top of the table and the promise of exciting and successful football. This season Bruno Labbadia’s Hamburg delivered 10 points and 12 goals in 4 matches, the top of the table and the promise of exciting and successful football. Martin Jol couldn’t quite deliver on that promise. As it turned out Hamburg had already scored 1/4 of their Bundesliga goals for the season, leaving not much room for the remaining fixtures and what little room was left was filled with way too many longballs. But Martin Jol had to do without the likes of Eljero Elia and Ze Roberto, so maybe there’s hope for a more successful campaign under Labbadia.

NEW: Hamburg’s early first half form.
Martin Jol’s Hamburg made a name for themselves as the undisputed comeback kids of the league, after his team came back from being 2-0 down in three of their four matches. This season it’s up to Hamburg to challenge the other club’s comebackability, as they usually only need three minutes for their first goal and between the 15th and 20th minute the opposition is already on a one-way street to defeat. A much more charitable attitude in the second half, means that Hamburg are not yet undisputed title candidates though.

SAME: Bayern’s “worst in…” season starts.
With just two points from three matches and an embarrassing defeat at the “Stadium at the Riven Path” in Mainz, Louis van Gaal had even one-upped Jürgen Klinsmann’s habit of producing worst ever/since results for the Bavarian giants. It was the worst start to a season since 1966 to be precise and without it, we may have never seen Arjen Robben in the Bundesliga so kudos to van Gaal.

NEW: Al Pacino pep talks.
How do you make an unfancied team like newly promoted Mainz beat Bayern Munich for the first time in most people’s memories (and those who claim to remember a Mainz victory probably also only think they do remember one, while it really never happened)? By letting Al Pacino do all the pre-game talking for you, as Mainz’s coach Thomas Tuchel did and then he just had to sit back and watch his team play the Bavarians off the park for 45 minutes.
 

 
Tuchel said, that he had some more ideas on how to motivate his team and that it doesn’t necessarily need to be a movie all the time. Whatever it was he did prior to his team’s next match against Mönchengladbach though, it didn’t work out at all and Mainz lost by two goals and two goalkeepers.

NEW: Wolfsburg’s first halves.
Wolfsburg were second best in the first 45 minutes of their matches against Stuttgart, Cologne, Hamburg and Bayern. Their firepower was enough to steal all three points from Stuttgart and Cologne, stage a brief comeback against Hamburg and threaten to equalize against Bayern in the second 45 minutes. Armin Veh argued that being defending champions means, his team could no longer counter attack as often and freely as last season. He also seems to want his team to find out for themselves, what to do instead and it usually takes one or two goals by the other team until they get a vague idea.

NEW: A large gaping hole at Bremen’s back.
Werder Bremen are currently giving the Weserstadion a little make-over and are using the opportunity to straighten the curves and remove the last remnants of the running track, leaving one end of the stadium wide open. Meanwhile, that large gaping hole in Bremen’s defense stayed the same, as exactly €0 were invested in defensive reinforcements in the summer. That’s my Werder.

SAME: Cologne’s lifeless and bloodless team.
Last year this fact was brushed over by an angry man filled with adrenaline running up and down the sidelines trying to transfer some of his surplus energy onto the team. This man is now in Turkey and was replaced by the quiet Zvonimir Soldo and his mute assistant Michael Henke. And if anything, they’ve at least helped to identify the problem.

SAME: Refereeing discussions.
Lively arguments about goal-line technology, video reviews, 4th, 5th, 6th and 7th officials and whether someone’s grandma could have spotted that offside position make 2009/2010 feel very much like 2008/2009.

NEW: Refereeing decisions.
There have already been four matches without any cards whatsoever compared to a total of six matches last season. Could be a coincidence but the referee in the Hamburg – Cologne match also looked like handing out a yellow card would be the worst thing he could do during the match (while in reality he couldn’t have done any worse than allowing Hamburg to score two irregular goals). Maybe there’s been some internal agreement to optimize the number of cards shown during the matches – whether it has any positive side-effects remains to be seen though. And there are good news for the players as well, as arguing with the referee might actually and finally bear some fruits. Schalke’s Benedikt Höwedes was successfully argued out of a red card by his team mates and Hamburg’s Frank Rost even one-upped that by convincing the ref that a goal scored against him was offside.

SAME: Hertha’s win-lose formula.
0 points = Hertha play well and lose.
1 point = Hertha play badly but at least don’t concede a goal / Hertha play well but can’t score.
3 points = Hertha play badly, don’t concede a goal and Kacar scores in the 88th minute.

NEW: Hertha’s defense.
Josip Simunic went looking for rural excitement but all he did was exposing Arne Friedrich as his waterboy, incapable of wearing the captain’s armband and stabilizing a defense at the same time.

SAME: Jens Lehmann.

NEW: Stuttgart’s heavy rotation.
Give Stuttgart coach Markus Babbel some cash and a place in the Champions League and he suddenly feels like he is in Liverpool again and needs to constantly rotate every available player, coach and green keeper in and out of the starting eleven. Just 5 points from a possible 12 mean that’s not yet working out all that well for him.

SAME: Felix Almighty.
Felix Magath may have switched clubs and reduced his financial scope, but he quickly made sure, there aren’t too many people left interfering with his decision making at Schalke – with (ex-)president Josef Schnusenberg being the latest casualty. All this hasn’t turned the club into title contenders yet as Schalke pulled off a vintage 08/09 performance that ended in a 1-0 defeat to Freiburg on Saturday.

NEW: Freiburg, Nuremberg and Mainz.
Their task is to replace Bielefeld, Cottbus and Karlsruhe and as far as the football is concerned they are a definite improvement. While they all lack Bundesliga-grade firepower up front, their overall gameplan and tactical approach is quite sophisticated. How much of that will remain intact over the course of a season-long fight against relegation remains to be seen though.

SAME: Ze Roberto.
Supposedly one year older, but you couldn’t tell.

NEW: Eintracht Frankfurt’s Swagger.
A few years ago Eintracht Frankfurt were a broke diva commuting between the first and second division, with distant memories of better Bundesliga days the only thing fans could hold on to. Along came Heribert Bruchhagen and Friedhelm Funkel with their vision of an office clerk Pygmalion transformation and they succeeded. Out went the debts, the yoyo and the dreams and in came the health insurance, cubicle and the promise of a two-week holiday in Brazil once the 30 year mortgage on the stadium has been paid back. For a few seasons Eintracht fans thought this was all well and nice and solid, but as time went by, more and more realized there could be nothing more depressing than watching a football team mirroring your boring life for you every second Saturday. Thus Friedhelm Funkel had to go and Michael Skibbe, of all coaches, was assigned the task bring the fun back to Frankfurt. Oddly enough, he has succeeded so far with an away victory over Bremen, a should-have-been-a-victory-if-not-for-the-ref against Dortmund and 90 minutes which more often than not look like football again. The team will most probably still end up somewhere in the greyish depths of midtable mediocrity but the fans will still think that it hadn’t been more fun finishing 13th in quite a while.

SAME: Incomplete lists.
So feel free to add your own observations via the comments.

It took 18 year old Lewis Holtby just one season to catch up on everything you would expect from a promising young talent and then he improved on it.

He was promoted from Alemannia Aachen’s youth straight to the senior side, skipping the reserves, and quickly became a first team starter. The DFB took note and invited him to play for Germany’s U18 and then U19. He racked up 10 assists and 8 goals in 31 second Bundesliga games to become Aachen’s most valuable creative midfielder and one of the hottest young talents in Germany.

Half the Bundesliga were after him and the other half probably didn’t dare trying given the heavy competition. Lewis Holtby eventually chose Schalke and Schalke eventually sealed a deal worth €2.5m + bonuses.

If you have enough time on your hand you can check the following video, which comprehensively summarizes his season at Alemannia Aachen.

Please send your fake takeover applications to admin@nufc.co.uk and the real ones to daryl[at]theoffside[dot]com.

Update: Just as I write this post the Borussia Dortmund Offside goes up for auction as well. If you are more the romantic type who can do without the successful and without the wealthy then this is a blog for you.

Update 2: I should have taken a little look around before writing this as there are even more team blogs available: Leverkusen Offside, Muklenblacklen Offside and Eintracht Frankfurt Offside. Blog for two of them and we’ll give you the third one for free.

Update 3: I think I see the pattern emerging, so it’s easier to just say that the Hamburg Offside, Cologne Offside, Bayern Offside, Bochum Offside, St. Pauli Offside and Hertha Offside are the only team blogs currently not looking for a new blogger.

For everyone else it’s season 46 episode 34 of the Bundesliga. We’ve already been served 2970 minutes high on excitement and low on answers – the latter will have to be packed into the upcoming 90 minutes. Who’s going to win the title, who will qualify for the Champions and Europa League, who is going down, what is the smoke monster and what lies behind Felix Magath’s wry smile? The league’s script writers have promised us answers to at least half of these questions.

Hannover 0-5 Wolfsburg. Except for the sell out crowd there was nothing really derby-ish about this game (and then, the last match at home usually tends to be a sell out anyway). Hannover fielded a reshuffled team, with 39 year old defender Michael Tarnat given his farewell match, and was consequently ripped apart by the best strike duo of this Bundesliga season. Wolfsburg now only need a draw in their game against Bremen to secure their first Bundesliga title. Can you expect Bremen to put up a fight and possibly repeat their 5-2 DFB-Pokal victory over the wolves despite being in between two cup finals? Well, they were easily beaten 3-1 by Karlsruhe this weekend – make up your own mind… but stranger things have happened.

Hoffenheim 2-2 Bayern. Hoffenheim have overall more quality than Hannover and they were ready to give Bayern a run for their money – e.g. they didn’t give Boubacar Sanogo a farewell match. In fact Hoffenheim wanted to win this game and take revenge for last year’s cruel defeat. They had to settle for a draw though, which will still feel like a defeat for Bayern, who in theory could end up winning the title next Saturday, or drop down to fourth and play in the second tier European competition for the second time in three seasons…

Stuttgart 2-0 Cottbus. And here is the team that will decide Bayern’s fate and who themselves could still win the title or drop all the way down to fourth. A solid performance was enough to overcome Cottbus. Mario Gomez was rested and only had a short twenty minutes cameo, which was enough time for him to set up the second goal.

Hertha 0-0 Schalke. Marko Pantelic scored a perfectly valid goal which was ruled out by the referee and since close games are Hertha’s trademark this season, the game ended 0-0 / the capital’s title hopes. Hertha fans could chose to read a lot into this match, and how this is typical Hertha style choking and apart from being wrong, they would also miss out on the silver lining. A win against Karlsruhe will guarantee Hertha a third place finish, with chances to go second, should Bayern and Stuttgart draw their match. A 63 point haul to date is their best ever Bundesliga result already.

Lucien Favre has some work to do to refocus and motivate his team though. The reaction to the Schalke game was a textbook case of the volatile professional football mercenary team spirit, with Voronin criticizing Favre, Simunic criticizing his team mates and Hoeness unsurprisingly criticizing anyone but himself.

Hamburg 0-1 Cologne. Just a few weeks ago Hamburg could still win the triple. Martin Jol was coach of the year candidate and courted by Bayern. Didi Bayersdorfer was a transfer magician with profit margins unheard of by even the most reckless bankers and Piotr Trochowski kept saying how he is ready for a really big club after every other half decent match he played. 28 days and Werder Bremen later, Hamburg’s season has completely collapsed with a super-poor home performance against Cologne being the icing on the cake. The DFB-Pokal and UEFA Cup were bonus trophies, but qualification for European football was the club’s official goal for this season, which now is in very serious doubt. Apart from the need to somehow raise their own game again and beat Frankfurt, they also need Dortmund to slip up against Mönchengladbach.

Dortmund 6-0 Bielefeld. And can you see this Dortmund team drop points against Mönchengladbach? Well, you could make an argument that Gladbach are a better side than Bielefeld…

Leverkusen 5-0 Mönchengladbach. Marginally better side really. It’s amazing and embarrassing that a 5-0 defeat still helped Mönchengladbach win a one goal advantage over Bielefeld. Bielefeld now have to win their game against Hannover and overcome a five goal deficit (four goals actually, but Gladbach scored more goals overall and thus would still be ranked ahead of Bielefeld) and hope Dortmund beats Gladbach. Based on Dortmund’s form, they’ll probably just have to make sure to beat Hannover and let Dortmund do all the goal scoring…

There’s a mini chance for some title decisive drama and a big chance for drama regarding relegation, Europa League and Champions League and I hope to get a liveblog ready to cover it all.