Mobben?
Although there isn’t an exact statistical “aha!”, there is a very close correlation between the distribution of Thomas Müller’s assists and goals and Arjen Robben’s presence on the field. Through all the hype and all the focus on on our misfiring forwards, have we perhaps overlooked the possibility that this pair last seen as before and after pictures for hair restoration, may be able to rough up the competition without their 3rd camarade?

Man in the Mirror:
Last season, the Altintop brothers did not face off against each other in the Bundesliga. Done groaning? Hamit missed the first match, and in last spring’s match in Munich, Halil was subbed off just before Hamit was subbed on. Or at least that’s what the official records show, seems a little convenient from the prankster-analysis point of view. As Hamit has played a grand total of 3 minutes in the Bundesliga since September, their interaction may again be limited to exchanging trikots which conveniently already have the correct name on the back.

What I’m looking forward to:
With Badstuber, Holtby (declared fit by Magath on Thursday), Höwedes and Müller likely to all be on the pitch together at some point Saturday, with the 23 year old graybeard Neuer in goal, there’s going to be a whole lot of the future of German football on display. Let’s hope they all give us an early career highlight reel.

Number play(the section where I do get lazy and steal from Jan):

0: Number of matches Schalke has lost away this season.

0-1: The scoreline in Felix Magath’s first home match as Bayern coach versus Schalke

1: The number of European matches won this season by FC Bayern and Hertha Berlin.

3: The number of goals Bayern has allowed at home this season, but alas, the number of goals that Schalke has allowed away this season.

22: Number of days Franz Beckenbauer has left as president of Bayern Munich. Unless he declares himself president for life. Wouldn’t put it past him.

99: The number of Bundesliga matches Manuel Neuer has played going into Saturday, as well as the number of Bundesliga goals Kevin Kuranyi has scored going into this weekend. Let’s try to keep it to one milestone, fellas.

And from the “not that scheisse again” department:
218: Minutes since Bayern scored a goal, in all competitions.

Sort of stat of the week:
When you take a strictly goal per match average, Schalke has the best away defense in the league, but guess who’s second? I was surprised to find it was Cologne. Tied for third were Bayern and Wolfsburg.

The Prediction
Headline writers will be itching for a scoreline they can work with. 2-0 to Bayern, a magical return to form! 1-0 to Schalke, Van Gaal raus! Unfortunately for all of them, my call is 1-1.

This is no time for reasoned analysis. So please dear readers, feel free to add your verbal vomit, expletives and other negative feedback, and I’ll try to restore order to the blog in a few days. After all, we still have a couple trophies to try to win.

But back to the business at hand. Babbel finds himself on somewhat similar footing to Lucien Favre before the ax fell in Berlin. After an improbable, (though admittedly less surprising) charge to the top of the standings in the 2nd half of last season for which he was given much credit, it may be his club’s inability to gel with new parts that has withered the spirit of last season’s rise. Babbel appears to be pretty far out on the plank, despite “votes of confidence”. This is a team that has lost 3 in a row in the league, and only managed to beat Freiburg and Frankfurt. And we know well that you don’t even need to be at your best to manage this feat. And while the numbers bear out that Stuttgart has indeed put forward effort, especially with regard to it’s last two losses against Schalke and Hannover, the squad looked sloppy and careless in its midweek Pokal loss to Greuther Fürth.

It won’t get any easy with the Bavarians coming to town, especially with Cacau and Sami Khedira out, while Ciprian Marica remains a question mark. Babbel has faced Bayern twice as Stuttgart coach, losing in humiliating fashion at home is last year’s DFB Pokal, and in Munich on the final matchday last season. You can track more of the story over at the Stuttgart Offside.

As for Bayern, the match will have special meaning for Mario Gomez, returning to his long-time home for the first time. Frankly, I’m a bit tired of young Bayern strikers being a little too sentimental for their old teams but perhaps we’ll be spared Mario laying face down and crying for Stuttgart if he actually scores a goal.

Almost lost in the shuffle of other news was the fact that Arjen Robben has been declared doubtful for the match. This seems a little bit surprising, considering he’s had a week to work up his fitness since the first Frankfurt match. Louis van Gaal indicated that he’d like to save him for the Bordeaux match, but frankly, I think Robben needs to be ready to contribute if the match is still competitive in the last half hour.

I expect Stuttgart to come out fired up, so the main thing is for the team to maintain its composure and not make any stupid mistakes in the first 15 minutes or so. Once we sustain the initial pressure, we ought to have the creativity and one on one advantage to produce the chances to win the match. I’m calling 2-1 for Bayern.

Demichelis drops turd in punch bowl
So after a 4-0 win in which we actually looked like Bayern, everyone’s happy right? Not so fast! Martin Demichelis didn’t take long to start complaining very publicly about his role at the club. First of all, let’s explain a few things to Micho. Comparing your situation to Mark van Bommel’s is like comparing Rotkohl and Spargel. For one, Micho, you are not the captain of the team! Your name is not Martin van Demichelis (don’t think that doesn’t make a difference!) I’m not at all certain Van Bommel would have come back into the lineup as quickly if it weren’t for the fact that we’ve been forced into playing a 4-4-2. Plus, you didn’t have to go play with the amateurs like Van Bommel and Toni were forced to do before coming back. And finally, are you really going to argue that your presence on the pitch is more valuable or deserved than Daniel van Buyten’s at the moment? Because I don’t think LVG is going to stick your right-footed ass in Herr Badstuber’s place. Ah, that’s better. Now, go help keep a clean sheet against Bordeaux and maybe we’ll think about letting you out of the Bayern Offside doghouse.

1) I looked at Frankfurt’s goal about 7 times on replay, and the best that I can come up with, is that it really was a freakish chance. Maybe Lahm gave up on his pursuit a little easily, maybe Van Bommel and Van Buyten were a little clumsy and slow to react, but overall, that was just a weird one.

2) I expressed a lot of frustration with Bastian Schweinsteiger in this space last week, and in the liveblog as well. I will continue to do so, until he finds some consistency in his game. His slow and sloppy play on Saturday was a major contributor to a scoreless first half. It continues to be all or nothing with Schweini, and I’m not sure what can be done to get him back to the consistent form that he has shown in the past. On the other end of the spectrum, a not quite ready for prime time Arjen Robben was ready enough. He more or less stole a goal from Gomez (ok, maybe Mario would have found a way to muff the rebound too), but his appearance changed the whole pace of the match, as we’ve come to expect.

3) As was well discussed in the liveblog, our set piece play is awful. There isn’t a lot of point in penetrating and earning frees and corners if the team doesn’t know what it wants to do with them (see Schweini and Tymo) or doesn’t execute them well (see Van Buyten, Pranjic, and to a lesser degree, Badstuber). I’m not sure what can be done to improve it, aside from Ribery scoring more amazing goals like the one in Dortmund.

4) Almost universally, those of us in the liveblog were incredibly disheartened by Louis van Gaal’s decision to sub in Demichelis for Toni. It seemed to be a “let’s not lose the 1 point” substitution. None of us realized that he was actually putting Van Buyten forward, and I watched it again to see if I had just been distracted. As it was, Daniel hardly appears on-screen in the broadcast until the 2nd goal is scored. So, this may be a case where a spectator might have had a better idea of what was going on than an international TV viewer. At any rate, LVG deserved neither praise nor scorn for the substitution. Of course, he’s a genius if it works. And he’s an idiot if it doesn’t. Not that he would ever admit the latter. So, the goal was luck, but not pure luck. Any statistical analysis bears out that Bayern had a ton of chances throughout the match, and to some degree that indicates making a lot of your own luck.

5) Strangely, it would be easy to skip over the man of the match: Thomas Müller. Of course, his skillful header set up Daniel van Buyten for the game winner, but it was his cross in to Gomez that set up the equalizer as well. When he is not the only one finishing chances, he seems to be the only one setting them up. After a rocky, foul-ridden start, he straightened out his game and was the best player on the field again for Bayern.

Pokal-Spiel live on ESPN 360
You will not be seeing a rerun! Wednesday’s German Cup match at Eintracht Frankurt will be shown live on ESPN 360, and we will be running a liveblog here at the Bayern Offside. Continental Europe is only 5 hours ahead of the Eastern time zone this week, so the match will take place at 3:30 p.m. Eastern time. There is a chance we’ll be able to pipe a feed of the match into the liveblog. So those of you without ESPN 360, please come by, and we’ll try to accommodate you! We should see the same starting 11 for Bayern.

In the news
With all the stories swirling around Schalke’s possible emergency fire sale, it was only a matter of time before the Manuel Neuer rumors started again. Günther Jauch (who made an appearance in this space as the graphic presence of the “Who Wants to be a Goal Scorer” entry), claimed he had a good source that told him that Neuer to Bayern was a done deal in the winter break. Felix Magath was quick to deny it once again. Whether Jauch, who is not exactly a Gelsenkirchen insider is on to something or not, I think the story of this transfer is not if, but when.

Reunion with Klinsmann this weekend?
With Stuttgart falling prey to Fürth in the Pokal on Tuesday, the Markus Babbel death-watch is on. Babbel still has a job as of this writing. Although Marcel Koller seems to be the most frequently-linked name to the Stuttgart job, some sources are pointing to a meeting between Klinsmann and Stuttgart President Erwin Staudt. Ok, this is probably the worst kind of rumor mongering, but maybe the only thing better than seeing the lame duck Babbel on the sideline against us on Saturday would be the confused-looking Klinsmann trying to put Alex Hleb in touch with his inner chi….or something.

Let’s get the red out of our eyes and back into our kits where it belongs. Here’s 9 thoughts on a match ending with 9 men:

1) Jörg Butt had the night of his life, and he probably won’t ever get to really enjoy it because of the result. For American football fans, it might have felt something like Drew Bledsoe standing on the sideline watching Tom Brady win him a Super Bowl ring. That they were not the best struck Elfers of all time is beside the point. Under most other circumstances, we would be hailing him from the rooftops. We still might; file this one away if goal difference ends up coming into play.

2) I can forgive Thomas Müller. I really can. This club has asked so much of a very young player, and all the dead wood around him could learn a lot from his example, most of the time. It was unfortunate that we had, by my count, 8 brain-dead players on the pitch in first half, 2 comatose ones and Mueller. Give me the guy playing with energy any day. I’ll live, and he’ll learn.

3) I said in the live blog I was hoping we would hear the right comments from the team after the match. I was duly impressed. Rummenigge especially had it about exactly right. Louis van Gaal knows football. I don’t know if he knows how to fix this team, but I think he’s got the right diagnosis.

4) Schweinsteiger needs to get acquainted with the bench, immediately. He slows up the attack, he gives the ball away way too much, and you can’t even use him for a corner anymore. Time to trot out Sosa again.

5) I really can’t forgive Daniel Van Buyten. I know what he was trying to do, but that foul in that spot at that time in the match was just irresponsible. At least he picked the right time in the injury timetable to do it, now let’s hope Micho doesn’t rupture a hamstring in the next couple weeks.

6) Those of you who have been clamoring for more Luca Toni: I am on your side. I don’t think he’s going to start scoring like a Bosnian anytime soon, but I think he still has a lot to contribute. And let’s face it, he hasn’t used up all his facial expressions yet.

7) The Altintop/Lahm experiment really didn’t end up getting a fair evaluation as a result of events. I thought Altintop showed some good energy very early on (first 10 minutes) and that was about it. But, I was still glad and I did feel it was right decision over adding Pranjic on the left.

8 We don’t know for sure yet if Arjen Robben will be able to take the field on Saturday, but with the new reports of Franck Ribery being out up to an additional month
he will feel the pressure like never before to lead this team out of the wilderness. Unlike certain other expensive transfer acquisitions this season, I think he may very well be able to do just that.

9) Tomorrow: A preview of the match against Frankfurt and the reasons why we shouldn’t be grumbling about a crisis.

Flank stakes
A key concern for Bayern going into the match will be the position of left back. With mediocre Edson Braafheid expected to miss the match, Daniel Pranjic had been expected to step in. However, on Tuesday the club’s official website speculated that Philipp Lahm may move back to the left and Hamit Altintop could make the starting 11 at right back. Although Altintop has routinely started at right back for Turkey, he’s never seen action there for Bayern, save for friendly matches or preseason tournaments. I would actually welcome this development. When you get right down to it, Pranjic isn’t any more a natural left back than Altintop is a right back. They’re similar in that they’ve mainly played the position for their national teams. Perhaps I’m just a little more swayed by my memory of Altintop’s laser beam against Anderlecht in the UEFA Cup a couple seasons back. That’s the kind of impact we need right now. Beyond this question, Louis van Gaal seems content to stay with his 4-4-2 alignment and starters from Freiburg last weekend.

Not yet under the table
Bordeaux is perhaps in even more rickety shape than Bayern. They’ve lost two consecutive Ligue 1 matches, by a combined result of 1-4. The only mitigating factor may be that these were both away matches. Fortunately, Bordeaux was without a defeat in the league prior to that, and still sit 3rd, only a point off the league lead. Bordeaux have not conceded a goal at home since the opening Ligue 1 match of the season.

Bored, ohh?
Reading the statistical line for Bordeaux, one will be struck by the similarities to the Bavarians. Last weekend, with 66% of possession against Auxerre, they managed 3 shots on goal. This was actually an improvement as the identical possession percentage yielded 2 shots on goal the week before. Taking the longer view on the season, it is clear that one of the main problems for Bordeaux has been creating quality chances out of possession dominance. In every one of their matches this season in Ligue 1, they have had the majority of possession, but only 33% of their total shots have been on goal. This compares to 41% for Bayern over the course of the Bundesliga campaign.

A similar though more depressing ratio applies to Bordeaux and Bayern in the Champions League: Bordeaux has put a measley 27% of shots on goal (off of an average possession of 53.5%); Bayern have put 32% on goal from an average of 58% possession.

Heroes in the air
More than half of Bordeaux’s Ligue 1 goals have been via header. So once again, this is where Daniel Van Buyten needs to shine. I’ve been encouraged that he seems to have remembered how tall he is, and is finally playing like it. I’ll be keeping an eye on the aerial battle early, knowing it could be of particular importance.

Something to shoot for?
You look at these two teams, relatively on the same course, and one feels, something has got to give. So is this the night everything breaks loose for both sides, and we see a 3-3 thriller? Actually, no. Although this is a match that could easily be won by either side off of one rather lucky shot, I’m afraid we’re going to be treated to another scoreless 90 minutes.

As for the match, it served mainly as a rehab assignment for Mark van Bommel and Luca Toni (who is surely tiring of them), but ended in a 1-0 defeat. That’s right, we can’t even score in Regensburg. I’ll give you three guesses which Bayern defender blew his assignment on the Regensburg goal..your answer, Luca Toni speaking German and uninspiring but humorous highlights below.

Where have I seen that shot at 1:35 before? Oh, right.

The long shadow of Volker Finke
A return to Freiburg for the first time in 4 years is enough of an excuse to recall their long-serving and influential coach Volker Finke, who in many ways succeeded in creating the anti-Bayern. Uli took a well-deserved long look back at the social studies teacher turned coach when he departed Freiburg in 2007. part 1 part 2 part 3
That’s SOME magic spray!
Among the surprises emerging on Thursday was that Arjen Robben completed a full training session on Wednesday and is expected to be in the squad this weekend! Considering LVG’s slow nursing of Ribery (and the fact that the slow nursing has not done much to actually heal Ribery), I’ve got to believe that including Robben in the squad might be more to give Freiburg’s coaching staff something to squirm about. And if so, it’s working: Freiburg coach Robin Dutt himself plans on spying on Bayern (because the surveillance budget at the smaller clubs really is non existent.)
The numbers..they do nothing
Throw out the all-time record book. SCF had Bayern’s number when they first rose to the Bundesliga, but it’s been slim pickins’ since. The all time goal differential is also skewed by a 6-0 Bayern win. It’s hard to get a fix on Freiburg by looking at the stats. They had been riding a two match win streak..but the first win was at Hertha, so who wouldn’t have won that one? The second was at home to ‘Gladbach, a 3-0 victory. Then, they traveled to Hannover where, almost unbelievably, they were thumped 5-2. You’ve got to believe that any team that can manage to concede 5 to Hannover is only willing and able to concede *something* to us. Forward Tommy Bechmann will miss the match, making Mohammadou Idrissou the only real offensive threat for the Breisgauer. As long as Daniel Van Buyten is using his height against the 6′3″ Cameroonian, things ought to stay calm in front of the Bayern goal. Center back Pavel Krmas is also doubtful, but I actually hope he plays. From my admittedly limited viewing of Freiburg, he seems to be perpetually wearing leaden shoes.

Look for Mark van Bommel to be back in the starting 11, no matter what the formation. The “rah-rah” phenomenon is always overrated in sports, but this team needs some, and he’s the man to bring it. It may take a little luck, but once a Tor is found, many more will follow. And then we can get back to worrying about important things, such as Klose sticking his landing

The match will air Saturday at 9:30 a.m. EST on GOLTV. I might have a liveblog up, and if I do, I’ll have a reminder up on the site on Friday.

I couldn’t agree more. We didn’t play all that poorly. Because I am hepped up on Spaten Oktoberfest right now (I know, I know, it’s no Hacker-Pschorr, but Spaten does hold a place in Märzen history), I am not going to get too analytical. But, I am of the view that 27 matches from now, this one isn’t going to bother us that much. The fact of the matter is, it was a well-played match from both sides, which could easily have gone 1-0 for Bayern as well. As is so often the case, the context of the match probably determined the outcome. Frankly, HSV needed this one more badly than we did. I’m not saying that they put in more effort, or somehow deserved it more, but losing mid-week unquestionably aided the urgency with which they played.

I was as surprised as anyone with our formation, but I thought for the most part, we were up to the task. There were a few segments of the match where I felt we were rope-a-doping, and putting a little too much pressure on Butt’s back, but otherwise we produced sufficient chances to get on the board.

Taking the longer view of things, I think the Juventus match is much more important. Again, considering Bayern’s record in Italy, Wednesday is a must win. The table isn’t totally pretty to look at after today, but we really ought to get 9 of 9 points out of the next 3 matches. I don’t think there’s some particular Achilles heel or lesson that comes out of today’s match. Just that when two top teams square off, and your own team is the visitor, a win isn’t always in the cards.

GOLTV rant
Now, I preface this with the fact that I was in a pub full of Arsenal fans, so I didn’t have any sound. I don’t know if they stuck with the Bayern match sound. But seriously, ***W-T-F???*** I know a little something about television production, and there’s no reason for me to have to be notified of the HSV goal by the Bayern iPhone app about 3 minutes ahead of GOLTV figuring out something happened in the match they went away from. I know damn well there was a director sitting there with the Bayern match in his preview screen the whole time. Just show a split screen!!! Or god forbid, show the first half of the Barca match 15 min delayed, and cut out the halftime (yeah ok, I see the revenue issue with that, but still). I would organize some willful boycott of their sponsors or something, if I thought it would do any good…

Of course, the media can’t go through the buildup to this match without obsessing over Ze Roberto. You can read a paint-by-numbers interview with him at the official Bayern website. I only ask one simple question: has there been a single moment this season when you’ve said to yourself “I wish Ze Roberto were here”? I didn’t think so. A personnel move can be sentimentally wrong, but structurally correct. We did not need to tie up 2 seasons in a guy who was clearly declining in the 2nd half last season. He might make a nice contribution here and there for HSV, he already has. But HSV fans, of all fans, should be familiar with pointing at long-ticking clocks, but in this case seeing that time is not on their side.

Making some waves in the tabloids was Louis van Gaal’s decision to send Luca Toni back to the reserves for the weekend. Why this surprised anyone, I’m not sure. Toni had been sidelined a lot longer than Klose had, and clearly the Pokal match was not Toni’s finest moment. Let’s rejoice in the fact that we’re good enough to say “Luca Toni, eh, we don’t need him this week”.

When you look at a long term rivalry with so much match data behind it, it can be difficult to pick out what is meaningful. The next temptation then, it to write in the monster-truck rally promoter style, something like “throw out all the stats, this is going to be an all out brawl for the top of the league!” Well, that misses the point even more. So without any further ado, let me give you the stats that I think are most pertinent going into this match. In 6 Bundesliga matches, HSV has scored 7 goals within the first 15 minutes. Bayern on the other hand, have scored a big fat 0 in the first 15. Conversely, Hamburg have allowed 5 of their 7 goals in the 2nd half, while Bayern have, you guessed it, 10 second half goals on the season. Six matches is enough of a sample to give you a good sense of what game flow is like. If you’ve watched Bayern this year, you know they are especially slow starters. However, Bayern have the luxury of willfully adapting away from this tendency–simply by starting Robbéry. Meanwhile Hamburg, who have seen the injured Paolo Guerrero and the gimpy Ze Roberto score nearly half their goals, don’t have much other option than to put their trust into the Bergs and Elias of the world and hope the early scores continue. Something is going to change in these opposing dominant trends, and I believe Bayern have the greater ability to affect that change.

Key matchup: Eljero Elia vs Philipp Lahm
Lahm is our leader on the pitch in Van Bommel’s absence, and he is coming off what was arguably his most offensive-minded performance of the season against Oberhausen. He’ll need to play his best defensive match of the season to bottle up the speedy Dutch left winger. Perhaps LVG and Braafheid will have a few instinctual tips for containing the former Twente product, but keeping Elia out of the flow would go a long way towards denying HSV the ability to reform their suddenly ailing attack.

Prediction
Hamburger SV 1:2 FC Bayern Munich
By now, my prediction section is becoming pretty comedic. At least I predicted a significant header last week. I have the feeling that I’m not according enough respect to HSV based on recent results. They’re a good team, especially at home. But, I think we’re determined enough to be better.