That was the weekend that was 05/11/06

So, in front of a half empty stadium, Hannover meekly succumbed 2-0 to Bochum on Friday night, moving Bochum up to sixteenth and Hannover plummeting to the foot of the table. Possibly not what the chairman envisaged at the start of the season, to state the bleeding obvious.

Saturdays outstanding game was Bremen vs Cottbus, where Bremen were initially denied by some poor finishing, Aaron Hunt being the main culprit, and some outstanding defending and goalkeeping. And then, confirming them as one of the Bundesligas form teams, Kioyo scored a magnificent goal to put them one up. Undeterred (and all credit to the Bremen fans for roaring their team on rather than turning against them), the largely forgotten Ivan Klasnic equalized for Werder as Bremen again laid siege to the Cottbus goal. However, a minute from time, Cottbus broke out and a glorious ball to Radu resulted in the Bremen keeper Wiese flattening him first and then taking the ball. Rather amazingly, no penalty was given, and both sides had to be content with the draw. Cottbus manager Sander was rather upset afterwards, stating he was unhappy that his team didn’t win – about a month ago I would have laughed myself stupid at his, but his team is better than most give them credit for, and it was hard not to sympathise with him.

Elsewhere, embattled Jürgen Klopp got a point with Mainz away at Leverkusen, Borussia Dortmund needed a last minute Alex Frei penalty to scrape a point at home to Arminia Bielefeld (and made me wonder how Switzerland didn’t convert any of their penalties in the shoot out with Ukraine in the World Cup), Hamburg lost again, this time to Wolfsburg (yet another Krycnowek cross for a Hanke goal) and have also lost two of their defenders to injury (Sorin and Kompany). The players first and second in the race for the golden boot, Hertha Berlins Marko Pantelic and Stuttgarts Mario Gomez also scored (Pantelic twice) to lead their teams to victories against Nürnberg and Aachen respectively.

Sunday had one reasonable game and one poor one. The latter was Frankfurt scraping past Mönchengladbach 1-0 thanks to this Takahara goal, whereas the former was a 2-2 draw between Schalke and Bayern. Schalke’s fans were protesting at the inability of Schalke to play well and win consistently by turning their backs on the team for the first 19 minutes and four seconds (Schalke was founded in 1904). No sooner had they turned round than Kobiashvili scored to make it 2-0, this after Rangers reject Lovenkrands had made it 1-0 in the 13th minute. Undeterred, Bayern found their inspiration in Andreas Ottl, yet another young Bayern star in the making (and the reason Bayern may feel secure in selling Owen Hargreaves during the winter break), who scored just before half time and then set up Roy Makaay in the 52nd minute to earn a share of the points.

Eventually I’ll work out how to put a table in the sidebar – for the moment, here are how things stand in the Bundesliga:

1 Werder Bremen 10 6 2 2 28:12 16 20
2 VfB Stuttgart 10 5 3 2 21:16 5 18
3 Bayern München 10 5 2 3 16:12 4 17
4 FC Schalke 04 10 5 2 3 13:13 0 17
5 Hertha BSC 10 4 4 2 16:12 4 16
6 Arminia Bielefeld 10 4 3 3 17:12 5 15
7 Energie Cottbus 10 4 3 3 14:13 1 15
8 Borussia Dortmund 10 3 5 2 13:12 1 14
9 1. FC Nürnberg 10 2 7 1 12:09 3 13
10 Eintracht Frankfurt 10 2 7 1 12:11 1 13
11 VfL Wolfsburg 10 3 4 3 07:09 -2 13
12 Bayer Leverkusen 10 3 3 4 14:14 0 12
13 Alemannia Aachen 10 4 0 6 17:21 -4 12
14 Borussia M'gladbach 10 4 0 6 10:14 -4 12
15 Hamburger SV 10 1 6 3 10:12 -2 9
16 VfL Bochum 10 2 2 6 09:17 -8 8
17 1. FSV Mainz 05 10 1 5 4 09:18 -9 8
18 Hannover 96 10 1 4 5 09:20 -11 7