While a 4-0 victory in a DFB-Pokal match against perennial also-ran Eintracht Frankfurt may not be an announcement that Bayern is ready to take on the world, it sure seemed like the team got rid of a lot of psychological baggage. Let’s review the charts.

Patient: M. Klose
History: Player has possible psychological aversion to scoring goals for club. Player known to display excessive unselfishness near opponent’s goal, often compounding goal scoring issue.
Result of Frankfurt therapy: Player scored 2 goals, moved into 2nd place among active players in career DFB-Pokal goals. (Who’s first? See below) Unselfishness rewarded by providing impetus for subject T. Müller’s goal when selfish play would likely not have resulted in a 3rd goal.
Prognosis: Player has left behind his goal-scoring aversion. Will now attend physical therapy to regain signature goal-scoring acrobatics.

Patient: M. van Bommel
History: Aggressive tendencies, leadership through rhetoric more than positive actions
Result of Frankfurt therapy: Player made first significant offensive contribution in quite some time with a lovely floating ball to teammate M. Klose that led to first goal.
Prognosis: Pleasant surprise offensive contributions to continue, though patient could also bite opponent’s ear off without warning. Supervision recommended.

Patient: L. Toni
History: Patient has history of hysterics and play-acting. Unable to score goals. May require leg braces (frequent falls) or vision correction as kicked balls often bounce off posts. May also have inner ear disorder, but claims symptoms are merely “how he celebrates”.
Result of Frankfurt therapy: To staff’s surprise, patient required little therapy and used his own head to solve his goal-scoring problem.
Prognosis: Patient will need frequent reinforcement from peers in order to maintain goal scoring levels. Could benefit from extended visit to warmer climate.

And there you have it, a somewhat clean bill of psychological health. I’m just glad we didn’t have to include Gomez, Rensing or Louis van Gaal in the analysis. We’ll discover who our quarterfinal opponent will be on Sunday

DFB-Pokal Goal scorers
I indicated above that Miro Klose moved into 2nd among active DFB Pokal goal scorers. Klose now has 17, and the active leader is Claudio Pizarro with 21. I was not surprised to see that Gerd Müller was all time leader with 78 (in 62 matches). What I was surprised to see was that 2nd all time is Cologne’s Hennes Löhr with a mere 39 (in 64 matches)! Yet another of Der Bomber’s unbelievable records.

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.

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…

I still have some concerns about the team, but things were a little better today. Tymo holds onto the ball a little too long. Daniel van Buyten had the best game of the season once he settled in. I thought for sure that Zidan was going to create some problems for him, bt once he settled, he had a magnificent game and this made my DvB loving heart swell.

Mueller was absolutely brilliant. Schweini had a shining moment in which I was reminded why I use to think he was so brilliant. He has struggled, but has been trying is hardest to get the ball to the back of the net. It finally paid off for him.

I still don’t think that Lahm is Captain material yet. van Bommel would’ve had a lot of direction or yelling in the first, but let me say that I do think Schweini is capable of leading the team and getting them in gear – as witnessed by the leg step. And not getting carded to boot. Butt is sometimes too aggressive, but I think I prefer that over the passiveness of Rensing. At least he comes off his line and isn’t afraid to say something to the team.

The attack on van Gaal after Ribery’s goal is hopefully the start to ending the dull roar of all the accusations of dislike, discontent, etc with one another.

The first 20 minutes of the game were a bit rocky, but after that Bayern stepped up and gave a great performance. Sure, there are things that I could pick on, but I’m hoping that this is a step in the right direction because they clearly wanted to win today. Overall, I’m pretty satisfied with today’s match and Bayern deserved all 5 goals that they got. I’m sure I left something out as I had so many different thoughts on this game, but there was so much going on. I can’t wait for a lot of the images to come out for this game!

There were a lot of mistakes by all parties in the first half. Rensing included. The announcers had said that he’s got a lot of talent, but is lazy as a goal keeper. I’m not sure that I have a valid argument for disagreeing with that. I keep hoping that he will prove me wrong, but I continue to see no reason that he’s deserving of the number one spot. I know he hasn’t had much opportunity to develop but not even bothering to move from your spot when the ball goes to your right really makes disgusts me. The score in the first half really should’ve been 3 or 4 to 1.

Müller is the reason that Bayern takes back a point to cut the lead in half at the beginning of the second half – though he’s not getting credit. It’s being called an own goal, but from what I seen it looked like it was all Müller. This kid continues to show his worth to the team. There is talk of him going on loan to another team, but I think he continues to prove that he wants to stay with the team. I’m not sure that he’d get regular playing time if Altintop actually starts to play like he’s capable, but it’s been proven that he’s reliable and dependable in a clutch.

Mainz did a lot of attacking and have had some great passes. And let’s not forget that beautiful bicycle kick in the first half by Bance. An offside call takes away a goal opportunity by Bayern, but at least they appeared to have wanted to play a little bit more in the second half. There was a great cross from my guy, The Belgian Bull, but it was for not as no one bothered to try to do anything with it. That seems to be the MO today as Müller put a beautiful cross over when he first came on in the first half, but no one did anything with that either.

I keep trying to remind myself that perhaps the team needs some time to gel. That they’re are several new players that have never played together and they need to find a rhythm. However, that only suffices for so long and I think we’re starting to get past that point. Missing key players doesn’t help the matter any, but it’s going to happen and the team should be able to function without them.

Olic nearly ties it up with a header, but its deflected off the post. Olic and Müller have been fantastic this second half. And another great chance for Müller, but he’s denied by Mainz’s Müller. H. Müller has had a fantastic game for Mainz as well. He made some brilliant saves.

There was an opportunity for a penalty kick in which Sosa kicked it over the bar. I don’t care too much for him as a player, but that probably shouldn’t have gone as high as it did. There were opportunities in the second half for Bayern to tie it up, but they weren’t able to capitalize on much of anything. T. Müller had an excellent game.

As a random aside, I think if you’re going to be an announcer for any sport, you should have to say player’s names correctly. It makes me cringe every time I hear van biten. He’s not the only one they butcher on the team. I’m just saying – if you’re going to announce, learn the proper way to say all the player’s name’s. Please.

The announcers talked a lot about the missing van Bommel and the things that were missing from the match since he wasn’t around – so see, it’s not just me. I really don’t have a whole lot of positive to say about this match. Aside from T. Müller and Olic. Mainz deserved this victory. H. Müller and Bance were definitely the men of the match.

And on a completely different note, I’d like to wish a huge get well and hopeful recovery to West Ham United’s Calum Davenport who was stabbed, along with his mother, on Friday night. Davenport underwent surgery and is in critical condition. His mother is recovering from her injuries.

As mentioned on the Bundesliga website, Thursday marks the 20th anniversary of arguably the coolest goal ever scored in the long history of FC Bayern Munich. It was August 20, 1989, in a first round Pokal match against Eintracht Frankfurt, when Klaus Augenthaler unleashed this magical shot..

On the Ribéry watch, it seems the Big 3 have more or less come out 2-1 in favor of Louis van Gaal in the ongoing position debate. Rummenigge’s comments try to downplay the entire issue, by stating the both Ribéry and van Gaal have “the same goal” but he indicated the “player will play where the coach decides”. Meanwhile, Hoeness tried to play the “manhood” card to a degree, more or less stating that to be considered one of the great players, one must play in the center, tacitly challenging Ribéry to step up. He was a bit less non-committal about whether the specific
situation at Bayern calls for that, labeling the situation “interesting”. Beckenbauer for his part, continues to bemoan the “problems” created by shifting Ribéry away from the left. It seems to me Franz is perhaps still making penance for his past slap at Franck.

Finally, a wacky story out of Italy as Luca Toni’s agent Tullio Tinti angrily insisted that he alone is the agent for Toni, and not one Jose Alberti. Alberti, whose actual expertise other than passing himself off as an agent or possibly being a fictional character are unknown, was widely quoted in the online stories speculating about a possible Toni move to West Ham over the last few weeks, including one I linked to in this blog. At least I managed to balance it with Nerlinger’s denial of the rumor. Come to think of it, maybe I should pose as Christian Lell’s agent and demand an immediate transfer to somewhere far away.

To Scholl’s credit, he seems to be taking a pragmatic approach, neither ripping lockers off the wall nor encouraging Zen meditation about the defeat. There is a report the squad will add 34 year old former Stuttgart, 1860 and Unterhaching midfielder Danny Schwarz, ostensibly for leadership purposes with this very young group. Each of the 4 Bundesliga amateur sides in the Dritte Liga (Bayern, Bremen, Dortmund and Stuttgart) are considerably younger on average than the rest of the teams and often lack an experienced stabilizing force. A couple seasons back, it was long-time Bayern central defender Thomas Linke, at age 38, who played this role. Additionally, the fact that the senior side for Bayern have pulled both Badstuber and Müller up to their roster makes it clear that Scholl has been dealt a tough hand. Perhaps the next acquisition should be Bastian Schweinsteiger’s brother, Tobias. The elder Schweini has scored 3 goals in 3 matches for Unterhaching thus far.

Bayern kick off the match with some great passing. There was a nice back heel to Franck Ribery from Luca Toni. This is going to be a tough match so hopefully Bayern can pull it off. I’m not entirely sure they can if they continue to play the way have lately.

Krstajic receives the first yellow card of the match for pulling down Toni just before the fourth minute of the game. Manuel Neuer makes the save on the free kick. Greatpass by Pander, but it is stripped away by Lucio.

Ribery set up a nice shot for van Bommel which was a great shot, but it was blocked. Luca Toni was there as well, but didn’t make a shot. It was taken away by Schalke. Some great passes going on for both teams.

Demichelis loses the fight with one of Schalke’s players, but fortunately Andreas Ottl was in the right place and was able to clear the ball away, giving Schalke a corner kick. Halil Altintop makes a gorgeous goal that just slices through and finds the back of the net off a gorgeous header.

Ribery shoots a laser across the front of the goal line and no one is there to capitalize on it for Bayern. It shows once again what a step up he is from the other players.

Manuel Neuer is working for his money today. There was a lovely shot from Ribery, but he was denied as the keeper makes the stop once more. Ze Roberto had the ball and runs into a wall of Schalke players taking an elbow in the eye. He gets a free kick for Bayern. Sosa takes the shot and its just off the cross bar. Neuer is quite angry and pushes Kevin Kuranyi. Not entirely sure what that was about, but replays show that he may have ducked when Bayern took their shot.

van Bommel takes a shot to the face which puts Lell in a frenzy. Schalke is awarded a yellow for the gesture, but I missed the player. I’m not entirely sure Lell cared about his Captain or if he just looks for a reason to throw down, but he was ready to go either way.

Demichelis had the perfect opportunity to score, but can’t capitalize on it. Unbelievable that he missed that. It was probably the easiest chance Bayern have had to score all game. One minute of stoppage time is added to the first half. Neiter team does much of anything during that time and Schalke remain in the lead 1-0 at the end of the half.

Bayern make a change at the half and Lukas Podolski will replace Andreas Ottl. A fabulous shot from van Bommel once more, but nothing doing again. Neuer is making some truly tremendous saves. He is definitely man of the match on Schalke’s side.

Butt makes a great save and the rebound is cleared away by Demichelis. The ref is doing a great job today considering he’s really got his hands full. Both teams are quite physical this time. van Bommel plays a ball over to Sosa and Podlski pushes off one of the players which makes the whistle go and Schalke get the ball back momentarily.

Rafinha and Ribery are both shown the yellow card at 62 minutes. Things got quite physical and both cards were well deserved. van Bommel goes down in a heap. He and Jones have been going at it the whole match. Hamit Altintop comes on for Sosa at 68 minutes.

Jones gets a yellow/red for a foul against van Bommel. He clipped van Bommel up high around his knee and didn’t get any of he ball at all. Hopefully the Captain will be okay. I’m a little surprised by the lack of Schweinsteiger this match. He has been absolutely brilliant and absurdly consistent as of late. He definitely doesn’t warrant sitting on the bench.

Borowski comes on for Christian Lell. The one man advantage is lost when Franck Ribery foolishly shoves a Schalke player giving him a second yellow in the match which sends him off the pitch. van Bommel received a yellow and is arguing about it as usual. Though this time, I think he had a reason to argue because as he was going down it appeared that the other player came across him. At this point, he should just let the ref give him a yellow at the beginning of the match and get it out of the way since they tend to be a little harder on him. Jones was also a 17.. maybe its all in the number?

Lucio picks up what appears could be a good injury, but there are no substitutions left so he’ll have to stick it out. He came down on his ankle in an awkward manner with his leg hyper-extended so that could be something a little more serious. I hope not, but we’ll have to see what happens. Shortly after that, he’s run over by Neuer. Rough day for Lucio now. His injury appears to be a little more serious as he keeps asking to be taken off, but Bayern have already used their three substitutions so he’s going to have to stick it out a little longer.

The Blues have won their fourth game in a row with a 1-0 victory over Bayern.

Lucio made a tackle in which he appeared to hurt himself. Bayern seem to have stepped up their game a little bit, but I can’t actually tell if that’s because they stepped up their game or Bielefeld is just struggling so much this season that Bayern seem that much more superior. Given their dreadful play for the majority of the season, I would likely chalk it up to Bielefeld’s stuggle.

Ribery and Schweinsteiger had a great run, but there was a brilliant tackle by one of Bielefeld’s member’s and it was put away. Bielefeld take the ball to the net and Lucio has a great defensive play, but he is elbowed in the process so the ball is given to Bayern.

There was an incredibly great pass by Sosa, but once again Toni is unable to capitalize on a ball that should’ve been in the back of the net. Unproductive once more. What has happened to Toni this season? He can’t seem to finish much of anything.

Some great footwork by Captain Dutch and when the ball is taken back to the goal line by Bielefeld, there is an absolutely beautiful save by Jorg Butt. Demichelis gets knocked in the temple, but in all fairness he wasn’t exactly just standing around either. He was all over the other player. Luca Toni was taken down as well. At which point, the announcer talks about Toni being a great player, but he goes down if you frown at him. Sometimes the announcers are more entertaining than the game itself.

van Bommel draws a foul which gives Bayern a free kick. Ribery takes the free kick, but it is hit straight into the wall and Bielefeld takes the ball down the pitch. No goals by either side twenty two minutes in, but there has been plenty of action by both sides. At twenty four minutes, van Bommel draws a yellow card for a rather wicked foul. I’ll give the ref this one. It was the right thing to do. For whatever reason, Lucio decided to bump van Bommel off the ball and Mark didn’t look too pleased about it. He stood there for a moment with his hands on his hips before moving on. Someone needs to remind Lucio that they’re on the same team. And being that the team member you decided to bump off the ball is your Captain, you might want to rethink things like that. Not sure what that was all about.

There’s a lot of shoving and pushing going on in this match. By pretty much everyone on both sides. There is more talk that Klinsmann won’t be back next season, but nothing we haven’t heard already. The opinions on what he’s done since he came are split, but I think, my personal opinion, is that when you take a team, who commanded such presence last season, and not many changes have been made to that team and yet they weren’t top of the table once the entire season, something is not working right. And the only major change has been the coach so you have to wonder if it isn’t that.

Some great missed opportunities by Bayern nearing the end of the first half. Now that Bielefeld have stepped up their game, its hard to tell that these two teams are on completely opposite ends of the table. I don’t know if that’s saying something for Bielefeld or discouraging for Bayern.

The second half kicked off with no changes from either team. This half is a little slower than the first half, but its still a physical match. Lell makes a cross that is far wasted because no one was there so Bielefeld take it back, but pass it too long and it’s given to Butt to send back out.

Luca Toni is doing a lot of shoving and pushing. He should be careful since he’s already gotten a yellow card. Sosa is replaced by Hamit Altintop at 57 minutes. Bielefeld concede a corner with 60 minutes gone and its taken by Altintop. It was whistled down before his kick and Bollman was issued a yellow. Altintop retakes the corner. It was knocked out by Bielefeld and Bayern try a third time, but the clearance is poor and van Bommel gets the ball back, handing it over to Altintop who slides it across to Lucio who misses and hits the side of the net.

Bayern finally score with a goal by Luca Toni. A gorgeous header to find the back of the net and see a much deserved celebration. A little dance and a team mauling, especially by Captain Dutch. Bayern take the lead 1 -0 with 65 minutes gone.

A foul against Ribery warrants Lamey a yellow card. Bayern were given a free quick through the work of Ribery on another player an it wasn’t deserved, but I guess it happens more often than not. Demichelis is given a yellow at 68 minutes in which Lahm almost takes a ball to the face from the player that was fouled. Case of mistaken identity perhaps?

Good attack by Bielefeld, but nothing comes out of it and Butt covers the ball. Lucio is down on the sidelines with another injury. This time he’s been stepped on on the calf just above his ankle. Bielefeld’s keeper is one of the reason’s that Bayern has only scored one goal. He’s been great. On the flip side of that, so has Butt. Absolutely brilliant between the pipes this match. I haven’t a clue why he hasn’t been first choice all season.

Once more Bayern have a chance, but the keeper totally snuffs any chance they have. He quickly saves another and I’m telling you, this guy is putting on a show today. Bielefeld are lucky that the score is just 1-0 and it’s because their keeper is quite cat like in his flexibility.

Bayern seriously need a replacement for Lell. He is just plain terrible and the majority of his fouls are so completely ridiculous. And let’s face it, he doesn’t even stand in the same league as Lahm. At 82 minutes, Tim Borowski comes on for Bastian Schweinsteiger who has had another solid performance.

Altintop had a beautiful chance to score, but he goes over the bar on what should’ve been a very easy goal for him. Two minutes extra time was added at the end of the second half. Lucio is down again. He has taken an absolute beating this match. Luca Toni has two opportunities, but he’s unable to close the deal again. Without their keeper, Bielefeld surely would’ve been sunk a long time ago by a far worse score. Thomas Mueller was brought on for the final seconds in place of Luca Toni.

Bayern close with a 1-0 victory over Bielefeld. An interesting game to say the least.