Bundesliga Matchday 12 by the Numbers

1–2-3 — Cur­rent rank­ing of Bochum, Cot­tbus, and Biele­feld on the “Anti-Fair-Play Table.” Here Bochum has a com­mand­ing lead thanks to their 33(!) yel­lows in 12 games. This trio tops another table as well, but this one’s about “Anti-Results.” All three are cur­rently in the rel­e­ga­tion zone. Coin­ci­dence? Prob­a­bly not con­sid­er­ing Anti-Fair-Play cel­lar dwellers Lev­erkusen and Hof­fen­heim top the real table.

4 — Times I’ve inad­ver­tently clicked on a link about a “WM” (Welt­meis­ter­schaft — any world cham­pi­onship, really, but also the World Cup) only to dis­cover, yet again, that it’s chess. And while it’s the third largest sport­ing event this year, host Ger­many has no shot or so I’ve read. Just be glad I haven’t mixed up my Chess Bun­desliga with, well, our Bun­desliga: “Arse­nal snap up young Nor­we­gian attack­ing star­let Mag­nus Carlsen from Bundesliga-leading OSG Baden-Baden.” Oh dear.

7 — Play­ers sus­pended for the next match­day. Robert Tesche, Jiri Sta­jner, Robert Kovac and Mesut Özil all will begin 3 game sus­pen­sions for red cards. Nico Herzig, Patrick Ochs, and Hanno Bal­itsch have accu­mu­lated 5 yel­lows which enti­tles them to a one game vacation.

9 — Points Franck Ribery has directly earned for Bay­ern from 3 Game-winning goals since return­ing to the start­ing lineup against Bochum on Octo­ber 4th. Includ­ing the game against Schalke, he’s been directly respon­si­ble for wins against Biele­feld (with the deci­sive sec­ond goal, Podolski’s effort later on just beau­ti­fied the score­line) and Frank­furt. They’ve won 16 of 18 pos­si­ble points with Ribery back from injury and shot up the table to a respectable position.

13 — Goals that Hoffenheim’s Ibi­se­vic scored this sea­son, even after draw­ing a blank in 1–0 defeat to Hertha on Sun­day. What’s so impres­sive about that? Beyond the 13:12 goals-to-games ratio, it’s where he’d rank among the top goalscor­ers of sea­sons past. After about a third of the sea­son, here’s where he’d fin­ish among the last 10 season’s final goalscor­ers table:

07/08 — 6th
06/07 — 9th
05/06 — 8th
04/05 — 10th
03/04 — 10th
02/03 — 10th
01/02 — 8th
00/01 — 8th
99/00 — 5th
98/99 — 5th

45 - Min­utes that Köln wishes games would last. If they only played the first half, they’d be sit­ting pretty in 2nd place. Cot­tbus, though, would stand to gain even more. They’d move all the way up to 7th! A game of two halves indeed…

47 — Hoffenheim’s cur­rent posi­tion on the Bundesliga’s eter­nal table. Bar­ring a com­plete melt­down they’ll almost cer­tainly fin­ish high­est among one-season par­tic­i­pants. They’ll almost cer­tainly top a few two-season teams as well. The ques­tion is, where will they end? It’s highly improb­a­ble, but not impos­si­ble, that they could pull ahead of SpVgg Unter­haching or Stuttgarter Kick­ers who have 79 and 77 points all-time in the Bun­desliga. Assum­ing they man­age this feat they’d have moved up 10 spots and 20% of the table in one season.

398 — Min­utes that Lev­erkusen went with­out con­ced­ing a goal until Anto­nio da Silva’s 37th minute strike on Sat­ur­day. Not only was this his first league goal of the cam­paign, but it marks the first time in more than a month that Rene Adler has had to fish the ball out of his own net (although he got more prac­tice on the day). In fact, Lev­erkusen were only a few moments away from not con­ced­ing a goal the entire month of Octo­ber. Only Voronin, with an 89th minute game-winner back on the 4th, infil­trated an oth­er­wise vig­i­lant Lev­erkusen rearguard.

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Has it really been that long since I’ve posted? Well, for that I apol­o­gize. But liv­ing in Wash­ing­ton, DC around elec­tion time is both excit­ing and hec­tic. This isn’t my first elec­tion in the city, but it is the most enthu­si­as­ti­cally received one I’ve seen here. It’s easy to get caught up in things.

Tagged as: Andriy Voronin, Bielefeld, Cottbus, Franck Ribery, Köln, Leverkusen, Rene Adler, TSG 1899 Hoffenheim, Vedad Ibisevic, VfL Bochum