die Tabelle lügen nicht! (Bundesliga Week 12)

Edin Dzeko Against Cot­tbus

1. Bayer Lev­erkusen
The sub­ti­tle to their sea­son should be “how we got to the top with a crap defense”. They con­ceded goals by a mis­di­rect from the wall on a free kick, allow­ing Tim Sebas­t­ian to waltz freely on another and let­ting 5’9 Iashvilli out­jump a defender. If it weren’t for Adler’s saves, they could have lost this game. Half their back four are loa­nees. Per­hars they should replace the other two with loans in January.

2. TSG Hof­fen­heim
And now you know why the Cleve­land Brown’s always blow chunks. Brown and Orange are meant for leaves, not uniforms.

3. Bay­ern Munich
Well things seem to back on track. Oh except Lucio wants to leave. And Toni Kroos. And Ze Roberto (to the MLS at that). And Van Bom­mel. And Schwe­in­steiger. And Van Buyten. And Podol­ski. It seems the only per­son that wants to stay is the only per­son they want to get rid of: Michael Rensing.

4. Ham­burg
Will Frank Rost’s five saves in this matched have mas­sive reper­cus­sions at season’s end for the Dinosaurs? If any of their sum­mer sign­ing such as Thi­ago Neves, Alex Silva, Janssen and Pitroipa ever start play­ing, I think they will.

5. Hertha Berlin
Who would have thought in August that HBS beat­ing a pro­mo­tion side at home would be one of the biggest shocks in Europe? Not the guy men­tioned in 11, that’s for sure.

6. Schalke 04
You know if Rut­ten replaced Kuranyi, Alt­in­top, Far­fan and Rakatic/Sanchez with DM’s he could play his dream for­ma­tion of 4–6-0 with six hold­ing mids.

7. Wolfs­burg
Sure Grafite scores his first hat-trick which he ded­i­cates to his father; how­ever, I can’t help but feel that the real story at Wolfs­burg is Edin Dzeko’s con­stant div­ing. He makes Ronaldo look like a man’s man.

8. Köln
5 wins in 7 for the one-time pow­er­house has them above Dort­mund, Bre­men and Stuttgart, fight­ing for a shot at Europa. Has any team taken bet­ter advan­tage of cor­ners this season?

9. Borus­sia Dort­mund
Not a good week to dis­play a Croa­t­ian flag in Dort­mund. After get­ting scorched by HSV’s Olic and Pet­ric, Robert Novac gets a straight red card post match for com­plain­ing. This means that they go into this week’s game with a thread­bare back line with Hum­mels already MIA.

10. Werder Bre­men
Are you kid­ding me? I go away for a few weeks and Thomas Schaaf, the man who has been at Werder Bre­men longer than I have been alive, is under pres­sure. The man who has been around for three of their four titles in some capac­ity; the man with­out a defense; the man who loses his best player each year to FC Bayer; the man with no con­sis­tency from Diego, Ozil or Frings; yet the man that has them mid-table is some­how to blame for a slow start? Sure they suck in Europe. They always suck in Europe. That’s part of the gig. If they fire Schaaf, I will lose my faith in the Bundesliga.

11. Stuttgart
Next week Bun­desliga Talk will fea­ture an exclu­sive inter­view with the last known per­son to be unaware of Mario Gomez’s desire to leave the Swabians……oh scratch that, I have been informed that he has just slipped back into his coma.

12. Ein­tra­cht Frank­furt
If Jens Lehmann quits because of what he per­ceives as a missed call in this game, I will buy an Eagles shirt with Liberopou­los’ name, hang in on my wall and wor­ship it like it’s Baal and this is 499 B.C.

13. Han­nover 96
Mike Hanke scores in the league for the first time since last April. Oh, it was an own goal. Hanke is a very streaky for­ward. But this is the kind of pur­ple patch that will give Dieter Heck­ing an ulcer.

14. Borus­sia Monchenglad­bach
Guess who is out of the rel­e­ga­tion zone after Hans Meyer’s 50th Bun­desliga vic­tory? 50 vic­to­ries! No won­der Hans Mey­ers has so much rel­e­ga­tion expe­ri­ence. But this week is all about Marko Marin’s first Bun­desliga goal, which was a superbly taken free kick. It’s the first of many more, such as his sec­ond half brace.

15. Karl­sruhe
They had a spir­ited come­back against table top­ping Bayer at the week­end, but let’s give credit to one of the hard­est work­ing, yet most over­looked play­ers in the Bun­desliga: Alexan­der Iashvili. The diminu­tive Geor­gian scored the lev­eler but he has been work­ing his tail off all sea­son and nobody is more upset than Schalke’s Kobi­ashvili, who once felt unique.

16. Bochum
That’s now just one win in 12. That’s the kind of form that will guar­an­tee you a play­off game come season’s end. Now that St. Pauli is con­test­ing the third spot in the Zweite, I sud­denly don’t like this new rule.

17. Arminia Biele­feld
This week’s win­ner of the “Mario Gomez’s You Can’t Frig­gin’ Pos­si­bly Miss That” award goes to Artur Wichniarek.

18. Energie Cot­tbus
You’ve been Lutzed, as in Lutz Wag­ner. Talk about the vic­tims of poor refer­ring deci­sions! First he calls off the Cot­tbus opener by Marco Kurth for obstruc­tion of the goalkeeper’s line of site. Since when is this a law? Rangelov was onside and at least 2 meters away from Diego Benaglio. But if this wasn’t bad enough, Edin Dzeko falls due to a strong breeze as the ball is rolling out of play, and he awards the Wolves a penalty. Wag­ner is fast becom­ing Germany’s equiv­a­lent to an Eng­lish ref.

Tagged as: Alexander Iashvili, Edin Dzeko, Frank Rost, Jens Lehmann, Lutz Wagner, Mario Gomez, Marko Marin, Rene Adler, Thomas Schaaf