die Tabelle lügen nicht! (a look back at round 20 of the Bundesliga)

1. Hertha Berlin (2–1 home win against Bayern)

Just think how good this team could be with half their starters back. Actu­ally it prob­a­bly wouldn’t be much bet­ter as those injuries haven’t been sig­nif­i­cant to their back line, and that is where the strength of the Old Lady lies. I will say, that after giv­ing Raf­fael a hard time last week, he was very good this week. I’m glad he’s read­ing the site.

2. TSG Hof­fen­heim (1–4 loss at home to Bayer)

Isn’t it fun to write them off? How­ever the last time they got stuffed by Bayer, they went on to dom­i­nate the league for 3 months. If they forgo Sanogo for Welling­ton, this team can still win the league.

3. Ham­burg SV (won 2–0 at home against Biele­feld; 0–3 road win against Nijmegen)

I was happy to see Grav­gaard come back after such an aus­pi­cious debut. I saw a lot of crap­pier per­for­mances by play­ers dur­ing Jol’s tenure at Spurs and he never called them out. It was out of char­ac­ter, what he did last week. But it may well have been the affa­ble gaffer show­ing evo­lu­tion in his man man­age­ment and that might be the what brings glory back to the sec­ond biggest club in Hamburg.

4. Bay­ern Munich (2–1 road loss to HBS)

Munich’s goal showed tenac­ity against the stub­born Drobny, but Frank Ribery’s reac­tion to the even­tual goal by Klose said it all. And there I men­tioned them with­out using the dreaded “cri­sis” word. D’oh!

5. Bayer Lev­erkusen (1–4 road win against Hoffenheim)

Maybe they should have moved to Rhein-Neckar rather than the LDU tem­porar­ily, as Labbida’s Lads (that’s trade­marked!) were Barcelona mes­mer­iz­ing at Hoffenheim’s new home. Dus­sel­dorf hasn’t been as accom­mo­dat­ing. They should call it Dusseldon’t (that’s trade­marked too!)

6. VfL Wolfs­burg (0–2 road win in Frank­furt, 2–0 loss to PSG)

Their first road vic­tory in the Bun­desliga this sea­son was fol­lowed by a pathetic per­for­mance in the Parc de Princes. They should call the Wolves UEFA Cup tie with PSG the pre-fab darby, as Wolfs­burg was a pre-fab indus­trial town cre­ated to house VW work­ers and PSG is just a pre-fab club with no history.

7. VfB Stuttgart (3–3 road draw with 96, 2–1 loss at Zenit)

It’s hard to say whether this was a good week or a bad week. On one hand they threw away two points by allow­ing a 2–0 lead slip at AWD Arena and they face an aggre­gate deficit against the hold­ers in the UEFA Cup. On the other hand, they man­aged a point late against Han­nover and they got a pre­cious road goal is abhor­ring con­di­tions against the hold­ers. I’ll let Diana decide.

8. Borus­sia Dort­mund (drew 1–1 at home with Cottbus)

It is my opin­ion that Young-Pyo Lee’s red card was bred from his frus­tra­tion that he is the only for­mer Tot­ten­ham player who was not bought back by the North Londoners.

9. Schalke 04 (2–1 loss at Bochum)

You know why Rut­ten is on the hot seat? He tried to turn every­body on his team into a defen­sive mid. Yet the only two DM’s he actu­ally had in Ernst and Kobi­ashvilli, one he sent pack­ing and the other he sub­se­quently turned into a left-back. If he were a mechanic, he would fill your engine with anit-freeze for shits and giggles.

10. Werder Bre­men (1–1 home draws with Glad­bach and Milan)

Two poor results again this week. A road goal for the Ital­ian giants seems to indi­cate that Werder will limp out of Europe once again, and the draw with Glad­bach makes it likely that the chance of a revival are remote. How­ever, the sil­ver lin­ing is that they dom­i­nated both of these games and took 77 shots in the two matches. If Schaaf can only sort his limp for­ward issue, this sea­son isn’t lost quite yet.

11. FC Cologne (score­less draw at home with Karlsruhe)

Their poor start to the sec­ond half of the sea­son could get worse when they pay a visit to Podoslki’s Siberia. A result in that game would be nice, but they really need to start win­ning again at RheinEnergie.

12. Han­nover 96 (3–3 home draw with Stuttgart)

Is it me or was that Jan Rosenthal’s best game since he seemed like the new kid on the block, two sea­sons ago?

14. Ein­tra­cht Frank­furt (lost 0–2 at home to Wolfsburg)

Sure, Leonard Kweike should have kept his hands closer on that free kick – TECHNICALLY. But he’s was look­ing away and pro­tect­ing his kibble’s and bit’s when Wolf­gang Stark decided to drag Frank­furt back into the rel­e­ga­tion battle.

15. Arminia Biele­feld (0–2 road loss to HSV)

It just isn’t your day when the only guy that has scored for you all sea­son misses a penalty. But Wich­niarek shouldn’t sweat the road loss to one of the top six. It’s results against the bot­tom teams that are going to matter.

14. VfL Bochum (2–1 home vic­tory over Schalke)

Six points so far in the sec­ond half is more than half the points the scored in the whole of the first. Is this just a blip or is adding a tar­get man (Klimowitz) into the mix enough to change thier fortunes?

15. Energie Cot­tbus (drew 1–1 at BVB)

Nice job Atan. Not only did you score a cru­cial goal, but when foul­ing Sebas­t­ian Kehl reck­lessly in the box, you had the com­mon decency to keep your hands off his shorts. We salute you!

17. Karl­sruhe (score­less road draw with Cologne)

Note to the Hoffe, do not let your best player go this sum­mer. It seems that one player can make a huge dif­fer­ence. At least they have pro­vided us Dino Drpic, who is more enter­tain­ing than a team that once was.

18. Borus­sia Monchenglad­bach (1–1 draw in Bremen)

While the talk was about Michael Bradley’s cross-Atlantic hat-trick; the real story was Logan Bailly. The ex-Genk man is already the best buy of Jan­u­ary in the Budesliga and if he keeps up his pace of saves, the old power may well escape rel­e­ga­tion. And return­ing, for a moment to Bradley, if the NYT had taken time to notice Bremen’s 35 shots, they would know that the kid had a bad game.

Your Bun­desliga XI

die Tabelle lügen nicht! (a look back at round 20 of the Bun­desliga), 4.5 out of 5 based on 2 ratings

Tagged as: Fred Rutten, Gravgaard, Jan Rosenthal, Logan Bailly, Michael Bradley