Match Day Thread: FC Bayern vs. VfB Stuttgart (Updated – 2-1 to Bayern, w/video)

By: phil | December 11th, 2011

Line-ups are announced, and apparently the flu bug has passed. In fact, aside from Schweinsteiger, we have everyone healthy for the first time in a while. We’ll see whether the boys are running a little slow from the after-effects of the virus, though.

For Bayern:

Neuer

Lahm – Badstuber – van Buyten – Rafinha

Kroos – Tymoschuk

Ribery – Mueller – Robben

Gomez

For VfB:

Ulreich

Molinaro – Rodriguez – Tasci – Boka

Gebhart – Gentner – Kvist – Harnik

Scheiber – Hajnal

Boateng and Gustavo are on the bench and appear healthy, so their absences is just rotational. If the flu victims are truly not at 100%, Olic and Alaba would be your first forwards off the bench. Usami is not dressed, unfortunately.

On the other side, Cacau is starting on the bench, so Harnik will probably be Stuttgart’s most dangerous threat. ‘Gladbach suffered a shock loss to the League of Augsburg yesterday, and Dortmund is being held by Kaisterslautern as we speak. So a win here would really help us open up a lead at the top of the table.

Viva viva FC Bayern!

* * * *

2-1 is your final. Bayern takes over first place, although the second half performance was less than convincing. Stuttgart played pretty well, and didn’t go into a defensive shell after they went down a man.

Some goal videos – Stuttgart’s, which opened the scoring:

A nice header and volley – maybe Lahm should have marked the far side of the box a little tighter, but really it was just a great play by VfB.

Gomez’s second – nice pass by Lahm, and a nice move by van Buyten to avid the flying ball:

Some thoughts:

- Tymochuk played very well, and looked a little more patient and creative than he had been recently. Lahm did several things well, Mueller looked solid, Gomez looked good except for the miss on the slip-in ball from Robben. And no, Gomez wasn’t fouled – he just missed it.

- van Buyten did his best to blow it with a weak back-header in the late going. Cacau almost made us pay.

- Neuer looked pretty good – didn’t have to make many saves, but he looked authoritative in goal and snuffed out a few set pieces.

- Basically, our offense has a lower ceiling without Bastian. We didn’t make too many mistakes today, but the best we can do without him is high-4th gear. We don’t get into 5th until he comes back.

Back with more later.