NORTH Top game for Enochs in Osnabrück: VfL expects SC Paderborn, who started with 3 wins and 13:3 goals after the winter break. It’s the duel of the 3rd against the 4th, both with good chances on promotion. (Saturday) Adam Maurer and SC Verl can do Enochs a favor as they face second ranked RW Essen. Maurer is expected to return to the central defence after his injury. Essen seemed to be on a secure promotion spot, but lost the last two games. Verl is 11th with many ups and downs, currently 3 pts away from relegation. (Sunday) SOUTH Matarazzo’s SV Wehen faces a hard trial to survive their streak of seven undefeated games. Guest is SpVgg Unterhaching, who is top ranked and 12 points ahead of a non-promotion spot with even one game more to play. Wehen is 12th and two points away from relegation. Matarazzo is expected in the midfield again. (Saturday) Lukin will be the only US starter for Siegen in Schweinfurt. Very important game for Siegen that is just separated with one point from relegation. Schweinfurt is second but last, but improved in the last games. Lukin starts as left backer, Norkus is on the bench, van Buskirk injured. (Saturday) Payne and Lawson are expected to start for Elversberg in Aalen, while Mason might get some playing time coming off the bench after his injury against his last year’s club. Elversberg is three points down in the relegation zone and would like to get at least one point against Aalen, which is ninth ranked and still undecided whether belonging to the safe regions or the relegation zone. (Saturday) Shoffner will be on the bench for Neunkirchen in their home game against the reserves of Eintracht Frankfurt. Without own chance to stay in the league, Neunkirchen might at least help some other teams by avoiding points for another team in the relegation zone. And bad news about Dooley: Dooley has other problems than the road game in Pfullendorf (both in the secure area without chances to promote or fears to relegate). Kicker reports in a short note that Dooley and 1.FC Saarbrücken meet in industrial tribunal. The club accuses Dooley of disallowed work as agent and other extra jobs, Dooley sued against it. He also says that there is no communication between him and the officials, and so his work is very limited at the moment. According to local media, the background seems to be that Coach Ehrmanntraut is quite a dictator-coach, who wants to determine everything alone. He sees Dooley as rival and the officials take the chance and want to get Dooley off the salary list. I can confess that this would be typical for Ehrmanntraut, who btw. is not exactly close friend of Cherundolo since their common time in Hannover.
NORTH: Enochs went full 90 in an important 3-2 win against Paderborn. The guests equalised twice before VfL scored the game winner in the stoppage time. Osnabrück cut the ranking to now three teams, who are currently involved in the title race. They are third with one point down. Maurer went full 90 in a 1-2 home loss against Essen. Verl performed very bad and had luck to have a strong goalie, who kept the game tied until the 88th minute. Before, Verl scored the equaliser with one of their two chances. Verl remains 11th, now 2 pts away from relegation. SOUTH: Matarazzo played 86 minutes as half left mid in a 1-0 win of Wehen against top ranked SpVgg Unterhaching. In their eighth straight game without loss, Wehen was pretty safe until Matarazzo did a dumb unnecessary and hard foul, for which he was ejected and now faces a probable four game suspension. With this win, Wehen jumps from 13 to 10, now with four points to the relegation spots. Lukin was the only used Yank for Siegen in Schweinfurt. When Siegen scored the 3-0 in the 49th, they looked like the secure winner at the second but last ranked. Also the first goal of Schweinfurt in the 71st with a more than doubtful pk did not really matter. Two minutes later Lukin was fouled in the box and Siegen got a pk – they missed, which also seemed to be harmless. This changed in the last minutes, when Schweinfurt scored two goals in the 83rd and 86th to win one point in a 3-3 draw, which will cause some headache in Siegen. Lukin was printed bold in kicker for being one of the best players of this game. Siegen is 13th with 1 pt to the relegation zone. Shoffner DNP in a 1-1 draw of Neunkirchen against Frankfurt’s reserves. Dooley’s Saarbrücken played the meanwhile traditional outcome: 4th draw in the 4th game 2003. They are 4th ranked, exactly ten points away from both promotion and relegation. Payne and Lawson went full 90 in a 0-0 draw at Aalen, which makes Elversberg remain 17th with two points down. The man of the match can already be seen in kicker’s headline “SVE wins a point with luck and Payne”. Luck refers to two shots against the crossbar. Payne entered the Team of the Day for the first time, and even was rewarded with the Player of the Day honours (for the whole league). Player of the Day Text: He cleared with his fist against Braun, with the foot against Rogosic and he threw himself into the shot by Hentschke short before the end of the game. Roussell Payne, goalie of SV Elversberg, was in the center of the happenings – and he stood there absolutely safe. Payne could not be defeated. No matter if it were shots or crosses. There was no way past the US American on this day. Because of that just one thing remained to Aalen: pure desperation. The 27 year old came from Derry City before the season as favourite candidate of the former coach Scheer to SVE. Seldom he was outstanding. Against Aalen he had a superb day though.
Only as substitute player due to his health problems in the off-season; one game in D3 and two for the reserves in D4. Yesterday Elversberg lost a postponed game at Bayern Munich's reserves 0-2. Don't know about the YA performances. For Elversberg this just means a wasted extra opportunity to collect points against relegation. From the other YA only Dooley is affected as his team dropped to 5 after this result.