//\\PUMA Joins Gladbach once again in Euro Journey//\\ 2019/20

Should be fun

 

A little song to get us ready....

 

I like the group and expect us to move on
today it's Wolfsberg at home, the weakest opponent (they say)
I don't have a clue how strong they are but they certainly are on the peak of their club-history so far (they finished one-digit for 12 consecutive years... in three different leagues)
started well in the league and acc. to their coach [it's a former RB-coach, who would have thought!... they are EVERYWHERE! even with us ;-)))]
acc. to their coach they plan to create chaos... please don't: we like it laid-back here at the Lower Rhine... ok, the coach (worked at Salzburg's academy alongside Rose) admits the Austrians usually are unhurried/relaxed themselves but this won't show this evening he says! still he seems to be curious himself how well the chaos-plot is going to unfold against Borussia
strengths (the say): compactness, set pieces, team spirit, pressing (surprize!) & the forwards Niangbo and Weissman (unfortunately it's 'Shon' not 'Whitey')
weaknesses: speed, individual quality, experience on a 'higher' level

coach Struber about Marco Rose in Salzburg:
"Very meticulous. A trainer who has particular strengths in leadership and personality. Marco is a really good coach with incredible expertise. He characteristically has a clear communication and can make an incredible impact on his players."

 

wow, I saw setbacks coming but not on this occasion
I still slept well (bad people always sleep well they say over here)

I still do!

now I do!

don't have more to say right now... interistingly it neither was horror/outrage nor amusement I watched the game with (maybe something in between) but it certainly was something that numbed my faint ability for analytical thoughts

just this:
file under: a highly embarrassing lesson with a (hopefully) long lasting reverberation
still: in every crisis there is an opportunity... let's start on sunday!

 

I didn't get to see the game, but caught the lowlights. Rose's thorn seems to be an inability to win at home.............Sunday game is on here. Hopefully they can turn it around.

 

Yep--the game vs Dusseldorf is on one of the Fox Sports channels at 9:30 am EDT. I'll be VCRing it as I also want to see Steffen play.

 

home weakness dates back to january, months before Rose signed
loss vs. L'zig was Rose's first home defeat in his professional career (his record was with another team in another league, of course)
I guess it's mainly about the team not the coach

right, the mistakes of the past can't be blown away after some weeks under the lead of the Rose crew, that's for sure, but a totally deserved 0-4 loss is a little bit too much to swallow
TF only had two players ranked better than 'ultra bad' and 'very bad': Sommer & Lainer

yes, definitely not a superior team (if I were in their shoes I wouldn't get too enthusiastic because there will be a re-match... I would like it to go this way: )
they kicked our ass because we've seen what we did see so often in the last seasons: lethargy, sloppiness, nonresistance
and another thing: when praise was accumulated on the team in the past, the next match often was performed in the famous 'laid back'-style...
yes, I hate to say (and I hope to be wrong), but this looks like 'mentality' again
for my liking this loss wasn't primarily because of coaching (acc. to Eberl Rose praid for days that W'berg would play exactly like the did play), tactics etc. it was about the team('s) attitude
(I hope Rose isn't going to be wrapped by the player's rhetoric babbling at all... if he can't handle that he'll become Hecking No.II but for my liking it's way too early to critizice him about that, he still has to learn about his players' mindset)

still:
D'dorf's Funkel: the 0-4 is meaningless, I watched them against Cologne and that was very, very good

 

I forgot: some people over here are telling something similar.... Rose's 'approach' will generally make Borussia a better away than home team they say
could be, but maybe I'm a little bit clueless because I can't see the 'approach' clear-cut at the moment, I see elements of it but a lot stays vague, so I'll just stay patient

by the way: if I could exchange thurdsday's historic debacle (highest intern. home defeat ever! quite impressive given that we played old-time powerhouses like Glasgow Rangers & Everton and alltime powerhouses like Juve, Inter, Real, Barcelona, L'pool, Pep City just to name a few) against the D'dorf win I wouldn't do it (I guess most of the supporters won't)
Bundesliga is our core business and while I did like the old UEFA-Cup very much, Europa-League (with the 3rd placed teams of the CL-groups making a re-appearance like the walking dead) never came close to that...

 

The EL is added fun (and added money). But the BL is where we need to play well.

 

didn't get to watch, but heard Patrick + x/time= quick draw.

 

I'll take it. But we need to do better.

 

don't watch!
it was a wonderful performance of the famous we-really-have-no-plan-3rd-gear-soccer of the late Hecking-period
I was moved, tears escaped from me... all this beautiful nostalgia!

wonderful that the team can still do this, they haven't forgotten!
wonderful how we gained beautiful possession and let the Turks (actually not much of them, neither on the pitch nor the stands) create all the danger
Sommer said we weren't calm/patient enough, for my liking we were much too calm & slow, but what do I know, maybe 'calm' is the new 'vibrant'...

strangely enough: fairly early -somewhat uninvolved- I started thinking 'What has this team to do with me?' and 'Is this the best way to spend my time?'... Europa-League is more and more feeling strange & pointless to me and I don't know why because in Bundesliga performances like this annoy/worry me much more

a) we are quite dull, inaccurate & impotent when in front of the opponent's goal (this already showed in the matches we won... defence, at least on paper, is much better), the last/final pass quite too often is a sloppy one
b) if we aren't able to gather pace all is looking totally bland right from the start (question is why this happens again and again: can't be because of quality: Wolfsberg and the Erdogans are quite mediocre teams, it was much too easy for them)
in the moments we don't get round to do this it's all mean, in the moments we do we can really become dangerous

the good thing: Doucouré was part of the squad!

ah yes, and Erdogan's police refused to let a lot of our supporter's into the stadium because they had flags with Gladbach's city emblem (which contains CHRISTIAN symbols) with them... maybe we should stop playing in Erdogan-country and hand them the points over because it's much better to not maintain contact with these obdurate & paranoid people...

 

because the Rugby WC is on and I don't want to become all negative I have a piece about smart Rugby-players (in this case it's an Irish one):
[and no, it's NOT off-topic]

 

To play the system right, it's high intensity running-moreso than "spirit". It has to be a coordinated effort of high intensity day in, day out, game in, game out. It puts a heavy strain on the bodies of the players-and a squad this thin and banged up continually are bad candidates to play it. You can't succeed this way with only "some" usable parts. The theory from Rose and others, if I'm understanding correctly, is that he can "teach" and motivate them to "get it." To me at least.....that's farcical at best.

You need the FB's.
You need the right skills in every area of the diamond.

Equally as important, you need the depth-as a certain club over here is about to find out to their immediate regret..................

Klopp didn't turn the corner at Deadpool until he got talent in numbers. Which is why I read Drew Carey Jr. and his hopes to return to his roots with the same kind of skepticism I viewed his exuberance over the chassis change........... without providing all the car parts.................

 

of course there are many angles/perspectives from which you can look at a game
and there are always more reasons/explanations why a match is unfolding like it does (and not foreseeable 'match-luck' is an important part, no doubt about that)

the mentality/spirit-issue is one of them, maybe it's been OVERremphasized (at least here in Germany) a little bit in the last time (which has to do with it being UNDERemphasized in the years before) and maybe it's sometimes an 'easy illustration' if you don't know what's really goin' on ;-))))
but that doesn't mean 'mentality' can't be a MAIN-issue when you look at a certain team... and I think, and wrote that many times ;-), with Borussia it is, especially if you look at it long-term (maybe originating from 14/15?)
above I used the term 'calm', what I meant was 'not being sharp', a wait-and-see-attitude... this really might work quite well when you field pure class... but maybe some of our players now and then think they can get along with that because they overrate oneselves?... they are not pure class (well Sommer is, and Zak is on it's way)

Sommer & Kramer both pointed out they weren't calm/patient enough... I understand that in some way, because sometimes it really looked hectic/rushed
but the pace how the team acted as an organism especially 'with the ball' wasn't right!
Kramer said they should have patiently outplayed the (as he freely admitted himself) not very impressive opponent by means of combination-soccer
I'm really not sure about that: if your combination play is THAT slow and THAT innaccurate and the players are rigorously sticking to their positions then even the Landesliga teams of the Lower Rhine are gonna easily defend this...

agree reg. Raffa, I think he could have started, but maybe Rose thinks/knows he isn't able to work for 90min
Neuhaus is clearly playing more manly but the whole package is nonetheless less convincing than in 18/19's Hinrunde
don't know why but Ginter & Plea's performance f.e. is certainly varying widely from match to match, Elvedi too: you think, wow, very good and given his experience already he'll be pure class in two years... and the next match you are asking: is he thinking of his girl-friend? swiss cheese? the green shade of the pitch? because he's obviously not thinking of his opponent...
I really like Embolo, but so far he didn't put his potential on the road I guess... neither on '10' nor as a striker in front

still, it's certainly far from being all bad:
in Stambul we missed the first two away-points this season!
I expected a much bumpier start in Bundesliga and I'm asking myself: if we -given the upheaval we are facing- manage to score like that (just 1 point behind of the evil empire and two ahead of Favre) and if only one team let less goals past than we did in Bundesliga THEN WHAT IS GONNA HAPPEN WHEN ROSE IS ACTUALLY IMPROVING THE TEAM ???;-))))))))????

 

that's our captain!
in the morning, at the Lower Rhine he helps his wife giving live to his son
in the evening, in the eternal city (and after we got a ridiculous penalty-gift), he stepped forward without hesitation (although he has on only played a few minutes after months of injury) and - as a reminiscence of Brehme's WC-winning penalty of '90 in the same stadium - puts the ball in the lower left corner
that's our captain!

despite a lot of similarities to the match in Erdoganland this felt quite different ... maybe because the opponent had much more class ... 25 very good minutes (without effectiveness though), then a corner-goal for the opponent (6 Rome-players above 190cm) and two outnumbered-phases for the rest of 1st half... the 2nd half was lacking in ideas but Italian defences usually aren't easy to crack!

unfortunately half of the squad is injured or battered
no Ginter (Jantschke did very well!) and no Pleá tomorrow I guess
Strobl & Traoré back in team training though

 

tough match, sometimes wild
in 1st half we played like a home team, start of 2nd we pushed for the 2nd goal, then Roma was all over... but at the end we came back
how often did I complain about attitude/mentality?
well, Rose showed up and just turned over the switch

still, our 'end'game needs improvement... incredible how much pressure (in comparison to last season) we are able to create ag. really good defences like Rome's... and incredible how recklessly we waste all these (half)chances... maybe the power adversely affects the accuracy? I always hope to avoid Italian & Spanish teams at intern. matches: they are clever and the usually make a lot out of very little if they need to... but with us it's often too sloppy or too complicated... where they need 2 chances we need 8... we show up at their defense line again and again but barely accomplish a shot on goal
if Rose is getting this right one day (he did A LOT so far!) the future is bright (or 'ROSig' how we say in Germany)

which brings us to Neuhaus?... very promising last season! then he played U21-EC, very good! (Kuntz didn't use him in the final though)... so I was really sure that he has the ability to serve our forwards quite well... when Rose came Neuhaus said that this will be a new kind of soccer for him... and he adapted... combative! no hiding, no lamenting... did you see him trying to pull away the BVB-player (lying on the ground) from the pitch in the final phase? can you imagine this under Hecking? from Neuhaus or any other player?... but unfortunately the icing on the cake is lacking; he's working hard but his play/passing game is missing the finishing touch... again, maybe the exertion spoils the precision/concentration when it's time to close the lid...

"Today we were up against a great side. It’s a shame about the last-minute goal.”
Javier Pastore