What to look for — Week 33

Rel­e­ga­tion Crunch Time

With two games remain­ing a total of six points is all that dis­tin­guishes the bot­tom five squads from one another. Three: Ros­tock, Duis­burg, and Nürn­berg tech­ni­cally inhabit the rel­e­ga­tion zone with 27, 29, and 31 points respec­tively. Biele­feld (32 pts) and Cot­tbus (33) are flirt­ing with dan­ger, being out of imme­di­ate harm’s way BUT hav­ing two of the three worst goal dif­fer­en­tials in the league (lowly Ros­tock rounds out this igno­min­ious trio).

How will this shake out?

Hansa Ros­tock — Rel­e­gated. They need two wins and a lot of help. It’s not incon­ceiv­able they’ll defeat Bochum in week 34. They won 2–0 (at home) in Decem­ber, but by week 34 it will already be too late. Unfor­tu­nately for Ros­tock they face a deter­mined Lev­erkusen side hop­ing to steal a UEFA cup spot from Ham­burg or Stuttgart.

MSV Duis­burg — Rel­e­gated. It all comes down to their final game against Ein­tra­cht Frank­furt after pre­sum­ably los­ing this week to Bay­ern. While they’re unlikely to get suf­fi­cient points to force their way out of the drop zone, their sched­ule is best suited for doing so (at least dra­mat­i­cally). In short, don’t be com­pletely sur­prised if Duis­burg should leapfrog Nürn­berg and Biele­feld to safety.

1. FC Nürn­berg — Rel­e­gated. It’s a shame, really. They’ve become a clas­sic yo-yo club and seem des­tined to go down yet again. They have the tal­ent to get a draw away at Hertha Berlin but that’s it. The final week sees a Schalke side visit intent on secur­ing an auto­matic Cham­pi­ons League spot. A valiant, but ulti­mately futile effort. Good­bye Bay­ern München and 1. Bun­desliga, hello TSV 1860 München and 2. Bundesliga.

Arminia Biele­feld — Safe. Had Biele­feld been forced to play Dort­mund away they would end up being rel­e­gated after los­ing to them and Stuttgart in suc­ces­sion. As it stands, they man­age to avoid the drop, barely, by draw­ing at home to Dortmund.

Energie Cot­tbus — Safe. Their mea­ger points cush­ion is enough to see them through to another sea­son of top flight foot­ball by default. Not a par­tic­u­larly inspir­ing exam­ple, no last gasp hero­ics, just the good for­tune of being the best of a bad bunch.

Tagged as: 1860 München, Bielefeld, Borussia Dortmund, Cottbus, FC Bayern München, Hamburger SV, Hertha, Leverkusen, MSV Duisburg, Nuremberg, Rostock, UEFA Cup, VfB Stuttgart, VfL Bochum