Scary

By: Chris | November 3rd, 2008

Die Rothosen delivered their Halloween trick a day late at Hannover on Saturday. And was it ever scary. And not, scary good. More like scary stupid.

That sucked After playing a solid, complete match in a 2-0 victory of Stuttgart mid-week, Hamburg took the pitch versus Hannover Saturday and delivered an absolutely *craptacular* performance in the first 20 minutes and Hannover never looked back.Iin the eight minute, Bastian Schulz made it 1-0 for the home side on a shot that the ever-reliable Frank Rost completely botched by coming too far off his line. Jan Schlaudraff made matters worse with a blast from inside the box in the 18th minute and that was that (Hannover added a goal in the 80th minute to really pile it on). Hannover is in such dire straits right now with their injury situation that they had absolutely nothing to lose in this match and everything to gain, and they played like a side with nothing to lose. With their victory, Hannover moved 3 points clear of the drop zone, and may have found a workable rotation themselves going forward. Hannover aren’t super talented (they are, at best, a mid-table team) but they are better than their recent run of form would suggest.

So now what? Well, fortunately HSV are off this week from UEFA Cup action, so they have the entire week to prepare for Dortmund. And Marcel Jansen and Nigel de Jong have started training again. I’m not sure how Jansen is going to fit into the rotation though. In the last match he played, he was in the midfield, but that was before Thimothee Atouba tore his achilles tendon. Now with Atouba out and the lapses in concentration by just about everyone on defense, I think we see Jansen move to left back and poor Dennis Aogo finds his usual spot on the bench. De Jong goes back to central midfield and Alex Silva also goes back to the bench, where hopefully he can practice his German lessons. There was one injury of note to Paolo Guerrero who suffered a thigh injury and is out for an unspecified period.

There’s a lot more that needs to be written–like, why have Hamburg slept through 3 different 3-0 defeats on the road this year? I don’t have time this evening, but I will leave you with one final thought: After each of the 3-0 losses, BMJ is quoted as saying “There is still work to do.” We are in November. The season is a third complete. The players should understand the program by now. What work is left to be done?