Matchday 9: “We are going to spend like never before (…) We want our rivals to have to follow our progress at the top of the table through binoculars.” – Uli Hoeneß
By: Jan | October 10th, 2007
A busy schedule kept me from blogging the last couple of days. So here is a late matchday 9 summary, for completeness’ sake. Nothing much has changed anyway as Bayern Munich is still top of the table and now already accumulated a six point advantage over Bremen and Hamburg. Stuttgart is a mere 13 points behind. This situation makes me feel like quoting some things I said after matchday 3, and maybe I will keep quoting them throughout the season. Saves me some work:
…it doesn’t or it won’t matter whether Bayern win or loose against one of the big teams, as long as they consistently and convincingly beat all the minnows, and as long as their competitors consistently and unconvincingly slip up against inferior opposition along the way. It’s a bit frustrating. If you leave Bayern out of the equation, the league is actually quite balanced and open at the moment, which is worth much less without a tight title race.
Six matchdays later it’s still the same story. Bayern actually went on and drew against two of the top teams, but kept on churning out three or four nil victories against lesser opposition. In the meantime there’s always one potential competitor who drops points each week. This weekend it was Schalke, who lost at home against Karlsruhe 0-2. I promised to criticise them for wasting too many chances, once they lose a match again, so: stupid Schalke! They actually had a Kevin Kuranyi goal disallowed for offside which clearly wasn’t offside, which left coach Mirko Slomka contemplating about the potential outcome of the match, had Schalke taken the lead. Had Schalke more deadly accurate footballers, who convert their chances, he might not need to argue about one disallowed goal.
Bremen meanwhile needed Duisburg to be reduced to nine men to be able to beat them 3-1, while Hamburg needed Rafael van der Vaart to beat Bielefeld 1-0. Van der Vaart has now scored seven goals in seven consecutive matches, equalising the age old club record set by Uwe Seeler sometime in the last century. Stuttgart officially backed out of the title race after losing yet another match. This time a 0-2 defeat at home against Hannover.
More matchday coverage coming as always from Raphael Honigstein in his weekly feature for the Guardian sportblog.
The UEFA Cup draw for the group stages is out as well. Check out Ian’s UEFA Cup Offside to find out more.
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Category: Bundesliga
Comments
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I’m shocked that Stuttgart is in the toilet. They seemed pretty decent and a bit unlucky against Barcelona (!). Can it be something with Meira and Schaefer’s marshalling of the defense? Hildebrand left, but I find it hard to attribute their form to his just loss. It’s not their injured “Hammer” either, because they were crap before he got injured.
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Meira is definitely out of form, but following his red card Stuttgart will have two matches to find out how their defence works without him. Schaefer is definitely not on the same level as Hildebrand, but I wonder if he really plays such an important role in organising his defence. In the end, he played in Nuremberg last season. This club had one of the best defences that year.
I don’t know if you can blame it on the injuries either. Werder Bremen, while not playing their best football, are doing much better.
Seems they have a psychological problem and they probably also face more serious opposition, now that they go into every match as defending champions.
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My Stuttgart-supporting friend has had a lot of choice words for Meira lately. It tends to revolve around her belief that Stuttgart needs a more stable captain, as they’re a young team. Too much of a temper and not enough of a leader for a team that finds themselves in Stuttgart’s position. So we’ll see, I suppose…
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Good point about Meira not being the most stable captain. Though, which Stuttgart player would be a better fit?
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As a leader… I don’t know. There aren’t a lot of options. Hitz, maybe?
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Hitzlsperger doesn’t want to be a leader. He once gave an interview in which he stated that he enjoys being a player who does his job in the background. Which doesn’t mean he couldn’t play the part. I somehow fancy Roberto Hilbert for the job, even though he is really too young and all that.
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