(R) VfB Stuttgart Thread 08/09

[Vfbstuttgartfan]

Well, matchday time again.;

first things, yesterday was again the ctiy derby between VfBII and the Kickers. We were leading 4-2 but two goals in the last two minutes gifted the Kickers a draw. Our amateur side is thereby in 9th place in the Tabelle, the Kickers remain dead last.


Anyway, on to the game against Hertha. There's no doubt this'll be tough - the last Bundesliga match we won against Hertha was 6 games ago, and I have no idea when the last time we beat them away was. So it'll gonna be very hard. But also manageable if we play to our best.
Unfortunately, injuries continue to treat us badly. The defence should look alright, with Boulahrouz, Delpierre returning probably today. Delpierre can partner Serdar in the centre, Boulahrouz might take Osorio's spot on the right - he has after all only recently returned from a game in Edmonton, Canada!

The midfield will be tricky. Pardo is training again but it's unlikely that he'll be fit enough for this game. I'd suggest playing Traesch there again, after all the youngster made an instant impression on me against Bremen :) Hitzlsperger and Hilbert, who was back to his best against Bremen, should play on the sides, and then the question is who plays attacking mid. Khedira, the fourth person we've tried out there JUST THIS SEASON, did very well in the last game, but unfortunately he's not injured. And Basturk and Simak are still apparently out injured. So I guess the only option would be Lanig. OR we can do as Kicker suggests: rush Pardo back into the first 11 and have a two-man central midfield with him and Hitz, have Hilbert on the rightwing and move Boka up to the leftwing, with Magnin taking Boka's spot in defence.

Dunno, it's complicated.

Marica will miss the game through injury, I would've expected Cacau and Gomez to start anyway.

It won't be easy today and i'll be pleased with any point we get. If we get a win, well that would just be immense.

[benztown]

How about this midfield:

Lanig-------------------------Hilbert
---------Hitz-------Madjeck

[benztown]

Or maybe Rudy will get his chance...

[benztown]

Sport1 also has Pardo and Boka in midfield...so it seems as if Kicker was right.

[THOMA GOL]

Voronin wearing a dominatrix mask:p

That highly cavernous stadium holding the sounds great from the Schwaben faithful.

[Vfbstuttgartfan]

Wow, our defence looked like it was asleep on Hertha's goal.

We don't deserve to be losing, Hertha have played crap and that was their first good moment. Hopefully we can come back.

[Vfbstuttgartfan]

Hmm this could be an irritating result and drop up quite a few places down the table if we don't come back. We haven't been great and something needs to be done in the second half. We continue to seemingly play much less well away than at home, and it would be a shame if we are totally unable to build on the Bremen result.

I have one hope though: Pantelic isn't playing, and Hertha have never won a game without him since he joined them 3 years ago. So let's hope. :)

[benztown]

I have one hope though: Pantelic isn't playing, and Hertha have never won a game without him since he joined them 3 years ago. So let's hope. :)

Is that so..? Very interesting...

Well, there's still enough time to score several times...

[Vfbstuttgartfan]

WE SCORE!

CACAU!

1-1 :)

Anything can happen now! Very important that we got this early equaliser!

[benztown]

The Pantelic curse seems to be well and alive :)

[Vfbstuttgartfan]

Oh my god, we're going to completely undeservedly lose this game...

[THOMA GOL]

That second Hertha goal was given away horribly! Right after the sub too. Sleepy defense:mad:

[THOMA GOL]

FT 2-1. This match was stupid!:mad: Freakin can't hold these scrubs. Where was the fighting spirit? Gomez looked pissed after the final whistle.

[Vfbstuttgartfan]

That really sucks... a painful, painful loss. We deserved more than this today. Berlin in recent weeks seems to be remarkably good at getting results through playing like shit. That sucks, they really are our bogey team it seems.

We drop to sixth now, could go seventh tomorrow, just shows how close the league. The loss isn't tragic, the standings are tight and we can move up again in future matches, but it's still a damn shame.

:(

[benztown]

Crap...:mad:

[+Gooner+]

Why did I watch this? This was one of the most annoying games I have seen since a long time. :mad: To give away points so carelessly....
Gomez and Lehmann were fuming after the game and I can't blame them. The strikers are isolated because midfield doesn't get anything done and at the back they made stupid defensive mistakes (which started in midfield as well). It shouldn't be necessary for the goalie to try and score to save a point!

VfB, the Wundertüte. But I like them even though they cost me some nerves today.

[Vfbstuttgartfan]

Player Ratings:

Jens Lehmann: Kicker Rating: 3(8 games played, 2.81 avg.)
My Rating: 3.5

Christian Traesch: KR: 3.5 (2 games played, 2.75 avg.)
MR: 4

Serdar Tasci: KR: 4 (8 games played, 3.25 avg.)
MR: 3.5

Matthieu Delpierre: KR: 3 (6 games played, 3.50 avg.)
MR: 3

Ludovic Magnin: KR: 3.5 (4 games played, 3 as starter, 3.83 avg.)
MR: 3.5

Pavel Pardo: KR: 2.5 (4 games played, 3.13 avg.) - Our Best.
MR: 3

Thomas Hitzlsperger: KR: 3.5 (8 games played, 3.38 avg.)
MR: 4.5

Roberto Hilbert: KR: 4 (7 games played, 6 as starter, 3.79 avg.)
MR: 4.5

Arthur Boka: KR: 3 (8 games played, 7 as starter, 3.81 avg.)
MR: 3.5

Cacau: KR: 3 (4 games played, 3.38 avg.)
MR: 3

Mario Gomez: KR: 3 (8 games played, 3.56 avg.)
MR: 2.5 - Our Best

SUBS:

Elson: KR: NR (No Average Rating)
MR: NR

Danijel Ljuboja: KR: NR (No Average Rating)
MR: NR


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Well, what can we say? Not much, best to just forget about the match and look forwards. We didn't play bad, mostly controlled the game in Hertha's own home stadium, but then we got hit twice with goals out of nowhere, and the second one came so late we couldn't answer to it.

Our defence was mostly solid. Delpierre had a successful return to the first team, Magnin did alright at leftback and I continue to believe he's a believe that he's a better option than Boka there, though Veh doesn't seem to think so this season. Traesch got to start again, this time at rightback. He did okay again, in fact he played a good game but unfortunately was largely to blame for the 1-0 as it was him who held up the offside trap and allowed Raffael to go free towards the goal. Still, everyone makes mistakes, especially inexperienced players, so I think we can still be pleased with Traesch, who's done a solid job overall, and we'll certainly see more of him in the future. However, once Boulah(who was back from injury but only on the bench on Saturday) and Oso are back, expect one of them to regain the RB spot.

The midfield was the weak point, not combative enough and unable to take advantage of the weaknesss of Hertha enough during the match. Pardo was the exception, he may have been rushed back from injury but played very well. Hitz and Hilbert were simply not good enough, whilst Boka did a solid job, though I still don't see him as a natural midfielder.

The attack did well, Cacau netting his first of the season, and Gomez playing very well, our best imo. Assisted the goal, hit the post and was often a threat.

Our subs say quite a lot about our injury problems - first came in Elson, who was bought under Sammer, played three time under him then was promptly loaned back to Brazil. Don't think he made it big there and he returned to us over the summer. And on Saturday with coming in he played for the first time for us in 3 and a half years. Very weird. As for Ljuboja, every time he's on the pitch it irritates me slightly, this man should have had nothing to do with VfB for a while now, and I wish Fischer was brought in instead. But of course neither of these players could be blamed for our loss.

Whatever, table's still tight. We're in 7th, 2 points away from 3rd place and won point away from 11th. Alot can and will change over the next weeks so we simply have to look forwards.

first though will be our first, and toughest, game of the UEFA Cup group stages - Sevilla away, on Thursday. Should be a fun game, we'll be the big outsiders, and i'm looking forward to it. :)

[Vfbstuttgartfan]

Well, we lost 2-0 to Sevilla last night. Can't comment on it really as no images were projected throughout the match due to some networkd dispute... basically, we started off poorly it seems and in the 15th and 16th minutes, we got hit with two goals right after each other. And we were never quite able to come back from that. We appear to have gotten better in the second half, Gomez hit the post, but we couldn't come back and paid for the poor start.

Nothing tragic in my opinion, I always expected to lose this one. Important is that we win our next match, which will be a home game.

More importantly however, we MUST, MUST get back to winning ways against Bochum this weekend or we could find ourself seriously dropping off the BuLi pace.

[Rainer24]

Honestly, I never for a second expected to win this one. I was hoping we might hold them to a goal and get one ourselves through a Hitzi bomb or something of the like, but it didn't happen. We need three points in the league. Anything we can get in the UEFA Cup is just a bonus to me. Having seen Liege play a couple times this year, I think we are going to have a hard time taking more a point in our away leg to them, and that only if we are really on our game. I feel pretty pessimistic about our chances to get out of the group in general. It's a new year, but it seems like the team has never managed to put together a streak of good form since we won the championship two years ago.

[Vfbstuttgartfan]

We play at home to Liege.

I'm optimistic that we can/will win :)