die Tabelle lügen nicht! (International Break Edition)

Please click on pic­ture to see all the car­i­ca­tures of Ger­man foot­ballers from Pit Ham­manns

Ham­burg SV
The Dinosaurs face Schalke in the most intrigu­ing game of the week­end. They have lost three of the last four matches against the Royal Blues at Nord­bank. Chances for this weekend’s game don’t seem great with Nigel de Jong out with knee prob­lems and Mar­cell Jansen out six weeks with a mus­cle tear.

TSG Hof­fen­heim
With suc­cess comes rumor. Vedad Ibe­se­vic is being tar­geted by Tot­ten­ham Hot­spur. Why the Bosn­ian, who is the only suc­cess story from the MLS devel­op­men­tal sys­tem, would want to play in the sec­ond divi­sion in Eng­land is the ques­tion I would ask.

Stuttgart
Just as Sami Khedira looked ready to make the attack­ing mid posi­tion his own, he tweaks his ankle in the U21 draw with France and will be side­lined for three weeks.

Bayer Lev­erkusen
Guess who has a €20 mil­lion release clause in his con­tract? He is also Germany’s new #1. I’ve been say­ing that Adler will even­tu­ally become of the most expen­sive keep­ers in the world. I won­der if Bay­ern or United are will­ing to test this clause and prove me right.

Schalke 04
Not con­tent with Rafinha being the biggest douche at die Knap­pen, Kevin Kuranyi’s antics against Rus­sia have him poised to chal­lenge the Brazil­ian in class­less­ness. How­ever, here’s the kicker! His national team form has been so non-existent, that nobody cares. In fact, for most fans of the Mannschaft, they just learned he was still being called up by Löw. If a tree falls in the woods, as the say­ing goes.

Borus­sia Dort­mund
West Brom Albion is rumored to be after Marc-Andre Kruska. They must have been impressed with his mar­ginal per­for­mance against France mid­week. Per­haps they mixed him up with Kringe and heard about his four goal out­burst this week against FC Herdecke/Ende. Per­haps they should check that it’s a 9th divi­sion team and the final score was 25–0.

Werder Bre­men
They lose Mar­tin Harnik, Daniel Jansen and Markus Rosen­borg to injury for the impor­tant clash against Dort­mund this week­end. In addi­tion, Per Merte­sacker is serv­ing the sec­ond of his three game sus­pen­sions. With Naldo and Prödl as the cen­tral pair­ing, Valdez has been smil­ing all week.

Hertha Berlin
In a good bit of news, Lucio’s knee is recov­er­ing and he could play by the new year. In a bit of bad news, Arne Frei­drich wants a lot of money, and more Nutella, to stay, and the Old Lady could be soon sell­ing their captain.

Wolfs­burg
Cris­t­ian Zac­cardo tore a lig­a­ment in his right ankle dur­ing a friendly match against Furth. And thus, you have the only news on the Bundesliga’s biggest sum­mer flop so far this season.

FC Köln
If they win at Cot­tbus, they will have 13 points and be in the top half of the table a quar­ter of the way through the sea­son. Not a bad return to the Bun­desliga for the Billy Goats. With the likes of Petit and Geromel, they should be safe from rel­e­ga­tion worries.

Bay­ern Munich
Okay, can we please stop with the Jur­gen in leder­ho­sen pic­tures? We get it. He’s a joke at the moment.

Karl­sruhe
A win at home this Sat­ur­day, and Edmund Becker’s side can go above Bay­ern Munich in the stand­ings. Then again a draw and a win at Frank­furt mid­week would do the same thing, and KSC could kill off two man­agers in a span of five days.

Han­nover 96
While Enke’s injury has seri­ously dented his hopes of tying down the #1 role for the Mannschaft; it is truly going to play havoc for trainer Dieter Heck­ing, who is above the rel­e­ga­tion zone mainly due to his captain’s exploits between the sticks.

Bochum
Was their come­back against Bay­ern about their abil­ity or Bayern’s inept­ness? A home match on Fri­day against Glad­bach should help sort that out. Per­son­ally, I think it’s a lit­tle of both and it’s time we started pay­ing atten­tion to Den­nis Grote.

Arminia Biele­feld
Some­one bet­ter learn to keep the ball in mid­field or Josue is going to have them for lunch this weekend.

Energie Cot­tbus
Seri­ously, I’ve got nothing.

Ein­tra­cht Frank­furt
They face five games in six­teen days as they face Bochum in the Madonna match mid­week and next week is an Eng­lish week, with a full slate of mid­week games. Three of their oppo­nents dur­ing this span include Cot­tbus, Glad­bach and KSC, so Funkel’s posi­tion should be either safe or gone by the 2nd of Novem­ber. With CEO Herib­ert Bruch­ha­gen now faced with fan ire, any­thing less than 8 points will most likely see the man­ager fired.

Borus­sia Mönchenglad­bach
Who do you call upon when you are in a rel­e­ga­tion dog­fight? A man with expe­ri­ence! In Gladbach’s case it’s the return of the enter­tain­ing Hans Meyer, who was last seen tak­ing Nurem­burg to the Zweite. How­ever his C.V. includes keep­ing Hertha afloat in their 2004 flir­ta­tion with the drop and, of course, gain­ing the once mighty giants reen­try into the top flight after the unthink­able in 1999.

Tagged as: die Tabelle, Hans Meyer, Kevin Kuranyi, Rene Adler, Robert Enke, Sami Khedira