Bundesliga Winter Break Review: Energie Cottbus

Energie Cot­tbus
Rank: 16th
Pre­sea­son Pre­dic­tion: 18th
What was I think­ing? Have you ever had a gut feel­ing that some­thing was absolutely going to hap­pen? In this case for me it was Cot­tbus being rel­e­gated. It’s no cer­tainty, but that was my feel­ing before the sea­son started and it remains unchanged. As you may know, I’m also a sucker for his­tor­i­cal prece­dent and that doesn’t bode well for Cot­tbus. Every three years, with­out fail, for the past two decades they’ve switched leagues. That even includes their time in the GDR. It’s a macro-trend I can’t explain and unfor­tu­nately for Cot­tbus, there’s only one way to go and they’re halfway there.

Sea­son High: 1–0 vic­tory at home to Karl­sruhe on Sep­tem­ber 15th. Yes, Cot­tbus did beat Hertha (and Glad­bach, but that’s no accom­plish­ment this sea­son), admit­tedly a bet­ter team than Karl­sruhe. Yet in tight sit­u­a­tions (like fac­ing rel­e­ga­tion) these matches effec­tively become six-pointers.

Sea­son Low: Well, I’ll go a lit­tle unortho­dox here and say, “Every time Cot­tbus plays at home.” I’m refer­ring to Cot­tbus’ atten­dance num­bers, which you can see after the jump, that aren’t too pretty. For a league that prides itself on spec­ta­tors, Cot­tbus sticks out like a sore thumb. Their aver­age home game is filled to only 67.6% capac­ity which comes out to just over 15,000 peo­ple. That doesn’t even exclude away con­tin­gents who make the jour­ney out East.

Why Cot­tbus Might Not Be Rel­e­gated: Away from the not-so-friendly con­fines of the Sta­dion der Fre­und­schaft Cot­tbus actu­ally looks (and per­forms) respectable. They’re solid mid-table qual­ity away from home, earn­ing a respectable point per game, which would suf­fice for 9th in the table. As men­tioned, they’ve per­formed very well so far against their bottom-dwelling neigh­bors on the table. In fact, against the two teams cur­rently above and below them (Biele­feld, Karl­sruhe, Bochum, Glad­bach) they earned 8 out of a pos­si­ble 12 points. Very respectable.

Why Cot­tbus Will Be Rel­e­gated: Some­how just hav­ing an old (non-Berlin) East Ger­man team in the topflight doesn’t feel right. That might have some­thing to do with there being only 7 (includ­ing Berlin) East Ger­man clubs in the three pro­fes­sional leagues. That’s as many as North Rhein-Westphalia has in topflight alone. And there’s Cot­tbus’ prob­lem, much like the GDR’s, of col­laps­ing in the end. More than 2/3rds (21 of 29) of the goals Cot­tbus con­ceded this sea­son came in final 45 min­utes. Tak­ing things a bit fur­ther Cot­tbus have scored 7 of their 12 goals in the first half hour while only con­ced­ing 3. While admit­tedly the squad is not as tal­ented as oth­ers, this speaks to me of coach­ing and/or con­di­tion­ing issues. The 2–3 defeat to Frank­furt epit­o­mized this. After going up 2–0 in the first quar­ter of an hour, com­pla­cency kicked in as Frank­furt scored 3 unan­swered goals in a game that looked all but in the books for Cot­tbus early on.

After the jump, stats and more stats.

Totals
Atten­dance — 121,917
Goals — 12
Shots — 175
Shots on Goal — 52
Fouls — 359
Cor­ners — 55
Off­sides — 45
Yel­lows — 33

Average/Game
Atten­dance — 15,240
Goals — .71
Shots — 10.29
Shots on Goal — 3.06
Fouls — 21.12
Cor­ners — 3.23
Off­sides — 2.65
Yel­lows — 1.94

Tagged as: Cottbus