Inept 1st Half and Enke’s 2nd Half May Doom Bochum to the Zweite

Look out! Bochum is in real trou­ble. With 4 games and 12 points to play for in this cam­paign, they sit just 3 points ahead of Arminia Biele­feld with a dwin­dling +5 goal dif­fer­ence. Undoubt­edly Mar­cel Koller saw tonight’s fix­ture at home against Han­nover 96, the only side not to win on the road this sea­son, as a win that would have almost assuredly have put them out of reach of the rel­e­ga­tion zone. Unfor­tu­nately his team for­got to show up. His cen­tral pair­ing of Yahia and Mal­tritz was ter­ri­ble, his mid­field seemed unin­ter­ested and his attack lacked an indus­try. Han­nover on the other hand, made two solid first half goals count as they relied on the bril­liance of Robert Enke to keep their lead dur­ing a late surge by Bochum. Han­nover won hand­ily 2–0, on goals by Brug­gink and Bal­itsch, and find them­selves safe for the season.

With three of their four remain­ing games on the road, Bochum, who has won only two away all sea­son, will be hard pressed to find any points in tough away fix­tures in Berlin, Ham­burg or Koln. Their only home match will be against Ein­tra­cht Frank­furt, but with four losses in a row, there is rea­son to worry about that match as well. So with few points to be seen in the final four games, both Arminia Biele­feld and even Borus­sia Monchenglad­bach could squeak by them.

Say Bochum only have one more point in them all sea­son, then the two other rel­e­ga­tion can­di­dates men­tioned above only need 4 and 5 points respec­tively to pass them. With both hav­ing eas­ier run-ins, it is quite pos­si­ble. Glad­bach have Cot­tbus and Lev­erkusen road games, where there is a pos­si­bil­ity of points as well as a home match on the final day against Dort­mund, who may not show up if Europe isn’t a pos­si­bil­ity. Mean­while, Arminia have an away match as well to Lev­erkusen (and who can’t win at the LDU?*) as well as home ties with Hof­fen­heim and a now safe Hannover.

I find it hard to see where Bochum can hold off Arminia. Bochum might be faced with hop­ing that the great escape artists Energie Cot­tbus fall apart and stay one behind them. Of course Cot­tbus face Karl­sruhe this week­end and that faint hope could soon be gone.

It’s no won­der that the Bochum faith­ful were so harsh on the play­ers tonight.

* The answer: Bayer Leverkusen

Tagged as: Arnold Bruggink, Borussia Mönchengladbach, DSC Arminia Bielefeld, FC Energie Cottbus, Marcel Koller