die Tabelle lügt nicht: Week 5 (Now w/ the Bundesliga XI)

Here’s this week’s Bun­desliga XI. It is packed with Bayer 04, Hof­fen­heim and Werder play­ers. It does include a spe­cial shoutout to the man who ended Energie’s goal drought, an under appre­ci­ated defender from Arminia and a goal­keeper who lost.

1. Schalke 04
Now 10 of their last 13 have been scored by defend­ers. This time it was Patrick Ochs. Unfor­tu­nately for the lad, he plays for Eintracht.

2. TSG Hof­fen­heim
I guess you can has­sle the Hoff. First it was Glad­bach and now Dort­mund fans. BVB was forced to apol­o­gize for protests that threat­ened vio­lence to Diet­mar Hopp. It’s no won­der the clubs voted against scrap­ping the 50+1 rule a fort­night ago.

I find it rather infu­ri­at­ing that fans are get­ting their knick­ers into a bind over a club’s patron. It’s within the rules of the game, and is no dif­fer­ent that Bayer 04 or Wolfs­burg. I think the issue is that Hof­fen­heim are build­ing their club prop­erly from the ground up. They aren’t just buy­ing expen­sive tal­ent, but good young tal­ent as they estab­lish their infra­struc­ture, ground and acad­emy. This wor­ries the sup­port­ers of clubs who know their clubs are not mak­ing the same invest­ments in these crit­i­cal areas.

3. VfB Stuttgart
Thor­oughly dom­i­nated their fierce rivals to go third in the league. Mario Gomez has rebounded well from a poor Euro campaign.

4. Ham­burg SV
If you keep leak­ing early goals, its bound to catch up with you. While they pres­sured Wolfs­burg relent­lessly in the sec­ond half, the goals needed for another come­back were just not there. But as always, at least Mar­tin Jol pro­vides enter­tain­ing football.

Chair­man Bernd Hoff­mann pre­sented a bud­get that puts the Dinosaurs third to Bay­ern and Schalke in rev­enue. He is also seek­ing to con­nect with three local investor/patrons to cre­ate a new club fund to help buy stars in the future. It has been dubbed “kick ³”, and could be a new inno­va­tion in the Bun­desliga. Dort­mund fans now have two to kill.

5. Bayer Lev­erkusen
Any­one still tak­ing bets that Bruno Lab­ba­dia will be the first trainer fired this sea­son? Bayer are play­ing a fan­tas­tic brand of foot­ball and keep­ing pace with the lead­ers. Their dis­man­tling of Han­nover was a com­plete team effort from Augusto to Helmes to Henrique.

6. VfL Wolfs­burg
A thirty minute bar­rage against Ham­burg sees Magath’s side creep up the stand­ings and remain one of the few unbeaten sides this campaign.

In another piece of good news for the club, they had absolutely no play­ers in Bild’s list of worst hair­cuts from the 80’s and 90’s.

7. Werder Bre­men
The good news: they own Bay­ern in Munich and they are through in the cup. The bad news: Hof­fen­heim and Inter are next.

8. Bay­ern Munich
The good news: Ribery is back! The bad news: he will be deployed as a wing-back!

9. Hertha Berlin
Hav­ing had suc­cess in Ser­bia with Gojko Kacar, who is putting in goals along with sweep­ing up in front of the back four, appar­ently Hertha are headed back for Partizan’s wun­derkid Zoran Tosic.

10. Borus­sia Dort­mund
Valencia’s Timo Hilde­brand has been linked with a move to BVB after being frozen out of the Valen­cia squad by new coach Unai Emery. I have never been con­vinced by Wei­den­feller and view this as a great move by Klopp, but an even bet­ter move by Timo, who should have a role in the national team.

11. VfL Bochum
They are going to regret drop­ping five points against fel­low trav­el­ers KSC and Cot­tbus so far this sea­son. Their next seven games include matches with Bayer 04, Bay­ern, Stuttgart, TSG, Dort­mund and Werder. A home tie against Glad­bach may be their only chance at full points over that period. Expect them to drop faster than the Dow.

12. Arminia Biele­feld
I thought Artur Wichniarek’s clinch­ing goal this week­end against Koln was can­di­date for goal of the sea­son. He had a beau­ti­ful touch on the long deliv­ery that took the ball away from the charg­ing Mon­dragon. He then cut right to pick up the ball left by Breko and Matrip who were rush­ing back to cover the net and chipped the two play­ers. Had he directly shot on goal, one of them would have stopped it. It was fantastic.

13. FC Köln
Things are not good for the Billy Goats. Daum can’t set­tle on a mid­field and thus it has been poor all sea­son. Wome is a com­plete and utter lia­bil­ity.  They were ham­mered by Arminia and Mainz within 5 days. And now comes rumors that they are try­ing to get trou­ble maker Albert Streit back from Schalke.

14. Han­nover 96
On the plus side, the flu even­tu­ally runs its course. But the Reds need their cur­rent pan­demic to end sooner rather than later as it has effected at least seven squad members.

15. Karl­sruhe
I thought they could cope with­out Eggi­mann. They can’t. Funny thing is that he looks absolutely pants for Han­nover. But so does Ste­fano Celozzi.

16. Borus­sia Monchenglad­bach
The win against Werder is look­ing like an aber­ra­tion. Incon­sis­tency from play­ers such as Marin and Alber­man and even the tac­tics of Jus Luhukay, who can’t fig­ure out if he wants to play a 4–4-2, 4–5-1 or 4–3-3, are the main cause. On the plus side, Jus has ended his feud with defender Steve Gohouri over injury treatment.

17. Ein­tra­cht Frank­furt
After another loss left, which left them in the rel­e­ga­tion zone, was fol­lowed by an exit from the Cup at the hands of Hansa Ros­tock, rumors were spread­ing that there were cri­sis talks between Bruch­ha­gen and Funkel. This is not good news for Eagles sup­port­ers as the last time they fired a trainer mid-season, they were relegated.

18. Energie Cot­tbus
They got their first goal and first point of the new cam­paign. Their mid­week cup win was a glut­tony of goals for Energie as they put three past Glad­bach. We won’t men­tion that they were all from the spot.

Tagged as: Albert Streit, Artur Wichniarek, Bernd Hoffman, Bruno Labbadia, Dietmar Hopp, Gojko Ka?ar, Timo Hildebrand