Bundesliga Winter Break Review: VfL Bochum

VfL Bochum
Rank: 17th
Pre­sea­son Pre­dic­tion: 17th
What was I think­ing? In the final 2007-08 stand­ings I had grouped Bochum among a few sides that I referred to as being con­sis­tently ade­quate, hov­er­ing just above rel­e­ga­tion. I was pre­pared to keep them there, too, except for the sign­ings over the sum­mer of Hashemian and Freier, who had had their best years with Bochum, left, and haven’t been the same since smacked of des­per­a­tion. It was purely a gut feel­ing to sub­se­quently move them down. Frankly, the sign­ing of Klimow­icz over the win­ter only rein­forced this feel­ing. Bochum’s a clas­sic yo-yo club and they’re on their way down.

Sea­son High: Sep­tem­ber, although Novem­ber could be con­sid­ered a moral vic­tory of sorts (at least for a team fight­ing rel­e­ga­tion). Sep­tem­ber saw Bochum notch their only win of the sea­son against fel­low rel­e­ga­tion strug­glers Arminia Biele­feld. They were, in fact, one valiant come­back short of an unbeaten Sep­tem­ber (their fight against Lev­erkusen pre­ma­turely ended by a red for Antar Yahia in the 84th minute).

Sea­son Low: The 4–0 drub­bing at Frank­furt on Decem­ber 6th is the obvi­ous choice. Com­ing off the heels of a 5–0 demo­li­tion to Bre­men, Frank­furt looked to be the ideal oppo­nent for Bochum to steal 3 points from. Instead an early dis­missal of GK Dani Fer­nan­des opened the flood­gates with Nikos Liberopou­los’ brace lead­ing the way. Another defeat fol­lowed to Cologne, keep­ing alive the sour taste of defeat as the team went on win­ter break.

Why Bochum Might Not Be Rel­e­gated: For a team bat­tling rel­e­ga­tion Bochum are sur­pris­ingly tough. Only in the afore­men­tioned loss to Frank­furt did they go down by more than 2 goals. 5 of their 8 losses were by a sin­gle goal. They drew a fur­ther 8 games. Sim­ply put, Bochum is an unlucky team. Then again, I tend to think we make our own luck. Preda­tory fin­ish­ing would make a world of dif­fer­ence for a squad that’s man­aged to fight blow for blow with most every other club, but seems unable to land that knock­out blow.

Why Bochum Will Get Rel­e­gated: Bochum is on pace to match some of Tas­ma­nia 1900 Berlin’s records and since a team with that name hasn’t been around for sev­eral decades you know these won’t be good. Although Tas­ma­nia set the all-time bench­mark for Ger­man foot­balling futil­ity (their pres­ence in the top flight a mat­ter of pol­i­tics not prowess in the first place) Bochum are on pace to match at least a few of their accom­plish­ments. Most real­is­ti­cally these would be match­ing Tas­ma­nia for fewest wins in a sea­son (2) and join­ing them as the only Bun­desliga sides with­out an away win. In case you’re won­der­ing why I men­tioned all this, Tas­ma­nia 1900 Berlin was relegated.

After the jump, stats and more stats.
Totals
Atten­dance — 221,040
Goals — 19
Shots — 233
Shots on Goal — 85
Fouls — 368
Cor­ners — 113
Off­sides — 44
Yel­lows — 45

Average/Game
Atten­dance — 24,560
Goals — 1.18
Shots — 13.71
Shots on Goal — 5
Fouls — 21.65
Cor­ners — 6.65
Off­sides — 2.59
Yel­lows — 2.65

Tagged as: 1. FC Köln, Antar Yahia, Bielefeld, Dani Fernandes, Diego Klimowicz, Frankfurt, Nikos Liberopoulos, Paul Freier, Tasmania 1900 Berlin, Vahid Hashemian, VfL Bochum