The Beeb’s Andy Brassell Talks Bundesliga Transfers

I had the oppor­tu­nity to speak with Andy Bras­sell of the BBC’s excel­lent World Foot­ball Phone-in on Up All Night. I want to empha­size that for those of us who fol­low the Bun­desliga, this show, although based in Eng­land, can be a mas­sive resource. Tim Vick­ery, with his knowl­edge of South Amer­i­can Play­ers, and Andy with his knowl­edge of the con­ti­nen­tal play­ers as well as the Bun­desliga itself can aid us in get­ting to under­stand new play­ers to the league. Although I don’t cover it with Andy, he is an expert on the Euro­pean com­pe­ti­tions and he wrote a book called All or Noth­ing: A Sea­son in the life of the Cham­pi­ons League and he can answer ques­tions about our clubs/opponents play­ing in Europa and Cham­pi­ons League. Feel free to call-in to the show and ask ques­tions. I did. If you do, they will take your name and num­ber and call you back so it won’t cost you an arm and a leg. I still want to call back about Geromel.

How did you become an expert on the con­ti­nen­tal game?

I kind of fell into it through free­lanc­ing via some Euro­pean foot­ball titles. I was always inter­ested. It may seem odd to some­one younger today, but fly­ing was a lux­ury when I was young so we didn’t get to see a lot of the Euro­pean teams as Eng­land were shut out of the com­pe­ti­tions due to Hey­sel. See­ing the likes of Real or Milan or even an East­ern bloc team was quite roman­tic in those days. It became a way of trav­el­ling inside his head

Next I began to ask about new play­ers in the league.

I’ve heard from some that Ana­toliy Tymoschuk might have come 3 years too late. What do you think?

It’s a very inter­est­ing thing. When he signed, I thought that is it for Mark van Bom­mel, as he seems like a dou­ble for Tymoschuk. How­ever, he still is the cap­tain and started the first game. But I know what you mean. If you look up the stats, you notice that he’s only 2 years younger than MVB. But he is still in fan­tas­tic shape.

Over­all I think he’s going be a good sign­ing. While there is a dif­fi­culty switch­ing from the East to Cen­ter of Europe because they play at dif­fer­ent sea­son times, he should make the tran­si­tion smoothly. There’s no sense of devel­op­ment as he will be able to come in right away and be a leader. He was bought for some imme­di­acy and should be a hit straight away. And if you look at his skills, there shouldn’t be a doubt at his abil­ity to be a big impact at Bay­ern: he never dives in, he has a good range of pass­ing and he’s a leader. He’s always been a cap­tain since he was a kid. So he’s not exactly a short term sign­ing as they can still hope to get a good 3 years out of him.

Dani­jel Pranji? and Edson Braafheid

The ques­tion is how the new sign­ings will do. There’s a dif­fer­ence between prov­ing your­self at a high level and prov­ing your­self at a mas­sive club. Boumjo­hann and Pranji? have proven them­selves at the high­est level, but how does that trans­late to the par­tic­u­lar pres­sure of Bay­ern Munich, where every point lost is a cri­sis. Pranji? should be nailed on to be really good. He didn’t rush into his big move, wait­ing until the prime of his career. And his rela­tion­ship with Braafheid, who should slot in at left back, will be impor­tant as they. LB is a posi­tion which Munich have been look­ing to fill so they can move Lahm to the right. Since both Braafheid and Pranji? are com­ing in at the same time from the same league, they could develop at the same rate together and it should be really interesting

Mar­cus Berg

Los­ing Olic was a big blow, so they needed more bod­ies up front. Berg has shown he can score, albeit in Hol­land and the U21’s. Can he make the step up to a big­ger league? There are a lot of play­ers that have scored in the Ere­di­visie only to fail else­where, so that is always a worry. How­ever, he won’t have to start every game with Guer­rero and Pet­ric already there. He should be able to develop with­out pres­sure mounted upon him.

Eljero Elia

He is “GREAT” sign­ing. There were lots of big clubs in for him as he was great in the UEFA Cup. But he’s not a one year buy. More like a five year buy hope­fully. I expect big things from him this year.

David Rozehnal

He was excel­lent at PSG, but lost his way at New­cas­tle and Lazio. It’s odd, but he’s in so he’s in his prime but needs to re-prove him­self. He’s rugged and phys­i­cal, which is some­thing Ham­burg have lacked in the past. Since Van Buyten left, they’ve lacked a defender to take con­trol of the game. But he can do it if he gets back to his PSG form and could form a great part­ner­ship with be a great with Alex Silva.

Eren Derdiyok

His voice got very excited at the men­tion of this young player.

He looked absolutely ter­rific when he came into the Swiss national team and has been very good for Basel in Europe, scor­ing at the high­est level. He looked to be going else­where, but I think he made a smart move to go to the Bun­desliga where he will play more often. It’s so impor­tant to be play­ing every week when you are 20 or 21. He did take his time with his first move. After all, he has been fated for great­ness since he was 17. He’s a ter­rific fin­isher. Very intel­li­gent. He’s a big guy who can take a bat­ter­ing but has a nice touch and can see a pass. He’s def­i­nitely one to watch this season.

Maniche

The key for him is to get fit. In the first game, he looked his chubby worst. When he’s on form, he can release an attack with the best of them. Even last year, he started off with Atletico like he ended with Porto, but faded. He’s always strug­gled with weight, which will mat­ter in such a fast paced league, thus fit­ness will be his key. And he may play for­ward at times as they see that he can’t run enough to play cen­tral mid­field all the time.

Pavel Pogreb­nyak

He is a great fin­isher: ice cold in front of goal. Good with both feet and good in the air too. He’s the guy you want when you have to have a goal. It might take a while to tran­si­tion from Rus­sia, but the Christ­mas break will help. I don’t think Pogreb­nyak is infe­rior as a fin­isher to Hunte­laar who would have cost 4x as much. He fell a bit of the radar due to his injury dur­ing the Euros but he is far supe­rior to Pavlyuchenko, who is good, but wouldn’t have been noticed by the likes of Tot­ten­ham had it not been for the injury.

I asked about Hleb in respect to Mar­tin Lanig and whether his progress would suf­fer.

It’s all about hav­ing a squad. The thing that can derail teams, that out-do expec­ta­tions, is deal­ing with the extra games, there­fore Hleb will help them rather than derail Lanig. And it’s a good deal, as Barca are pay­ing part of his wages.

I didn’t ask about Sami Khedira, but he did vol­un­teer that he thinks the Stuttgart mid­fielder is going to be a really big star in the next 5 years.

Another player he offered up was Wolfs­burg mid­fielder Karim Ziani. He is is defin­tely one to watch. He was under­used at Mar­seille, who had an abun­dance of attack­ing mid­field­ers, but he could be a ter­rific signing.

I want to thank Andy for his time, as he allowed me to stray off-point to talk about Spurs at times. That was kind of him.

Tagged as: Alexander Hleb, Anatoliy Tymoschuk, Andy Brassell, Danijel Pranji?, David Rozehnal, Edson Braafheid, Eljero Elia, Eren Derdiyok, Karim Ziani, Maniche, Marcus Berg, Pavel Pogrebnyak, Sami Khedira