Stumbling in Nürnberg

By: Mark | January 31st, 2011

Oh boy, not the prettiest game on Saturday for HSV fans. All week I’d been getting excited for the match, and with all the talk of keeping RvN so we can qualify for Europe, I guess it was inevitable that Hamburg would stumble, which is exactly what they did with a 2-0 loss in Nürnberg. The team is now back in 7th place, 3 points out of contention for the Europa League. There’s a lot of soccer yet to play this season, but obviously HSV have to take the points against the teams below them in the table if they are going to reach the top 4 to 6 places.

I’m probably beating a dead horse here, but Hamburg really have got to get better at scoring. The previous 2 games they won with the narrowest of margins, 1-0. You can’t rely on your defense and keeper to keep a clean-sheet every week. Imagine if Hamburg had gotten an early goal in the first half and taken a lead into the second? I think they would have had a much better result. But they couldn’t score and eventually something had to give. As much as we like to put Frank Rost on a pedestal, he is only human and he gave up a penalty kick trying to beat a striker to a ball, so Hamburg conceded their first goal of 2011. A little later Kacar was given an arguably unnecessary red card from a very light shirt-pull, and Nürnberg scored their 2nd goal on the resulting free kick. Hamburg put on all of their attacking options to try to get back in the game, but with only 10 men and 2 goals down it was too much for the team this day.

So let’s move on and hope the excitement of the upcoming Hamburg derby can spur this team into action and lots of goals. The one good thing we saw on Saturday was the long-awaiting returns of Marcel Jansen and Paolo Guerrero. Neither of them were able to make an impact, but the more healthy bodies returning to action, the better. Kacar will be suspended for the next match, so will we see the return of Joris Mathijsen by then? Maybe a bit to early yet. I hope Armin Veh can put together a decent back 4 by Saturday. Also, it looks like Hamburg won’t be loaning our Guerrero, so we have lots of strikers available now. Choupo-Moting might go on loan, because he won’t get much time in the lineup, but I hope we get him back for next year. I think now that both Petric and Guerrero are healthy, Armin Veh should put one of them back in to start beside van Nistelrooy. Ben-Hatira had a couple of good games, but he didn’t do much this week. Now we need some clutch goals, and I hope Mladen or Paolo can provide them!

Bring on St. Pauli!