Aww Hell

I asked them to return to Hertha in one piece, but do they ever listen to me? No.

The news out of the Hertha camp is that two of our major players were causalities of this week’s internationals, the two that no Hertha fan wants to see on the sidelines: Arne Friedrich and Gojko Kacar.

Arne was ruled out of playing before even the game against Azerbaijan, leaving training with an adductor strain. It’s not the most serious of injuries, and it’s likely that he’ll be back in training early next week, but it’s too soon for tomorrow’s game. Arne seems to be jinxed when it comes to playing his preferred central-defending position for Germany- it seems that every time it’s announced he’ll get his chance, something goes wrong and he doesn’t get it.

And now Bild is reporting that Gojko Kacar won’t be playing in Mainz either. The Hertha website describes his injury as a “charley horse” and he apparently sustained it colliding with the goalkeeper in Serbia’s 1-1 draw with France. The Hertha site doesn’t come out and say that Gojko won’t be involved, but I’d be very, very surprised to see him.

This means that we’re likely to see Rasmus Bengtsson make his first Bundesliga start, and we’ll probably be relying on Florian Kringe (who Google translates as Tamas Hajnal for inexplicable reasons) in midfield.

The glimmer of hope here is that we’re not the only team in this game with major injuries- Mainz have some of their own. Perhaps most seriously is that they’re without their first two goalkeepers, which means that there’s a good chance they’ll be starting a 19-year-old. That can either be good for us, with an inexperienced goalkeeper letting in some shots a more experienced one wouldn’t, or bad for us, as past Bundesliga seasons have seen young goalkeeping talent really grab their chance in a situation like that. We also have Cicero and Patrick Ebert back from injury.

Mainz, promoted back to the Bundesliga after two seasons out, have started fairly brightly, with their best result being their last home game where they beat the mighty Bayern Munich, 2-1. They followed that up by losing away to Mönchengladbach. They’re hoping to get back to the form that saw them overpower the mighty Bavarians. As for us, we can’t really afford another loss right now and greatly need to get back on track. With our form and injury list, I can’t say that I’m that optimistic, but you never know…

Category: match preview

Tags: match preview

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