Three in a Row

The thing about Werder Bremen is that, even now, you don’t know which Werder Bremen will show up. Will it be the one that beat Arminia Bielefeld 8-1, or the one that lost to Duisburg? Majestic or tragic? Thrilling or mundane? You never know, with Bremen.

After they scored inside of the first minute- Fritz and Rosenberg combining, with help from a Jaroslav Drobny error- I was dreading what was to come. (Also, I was sleepy- it was 6:30 in the damned morning.) After a fairly humiliating couple of weeks, it looked as if the good Bremen had awoken. Unfortunate timing, in my opinion, as much as I like Bremen and their adorable Zaubermaus Diego (also Torsten Frings’ hair). I was hoping they’d hold off on the revival for one more week.

However, ten minutes in, I had reason to hope. Rudi Skacel curled in a free kick and Andre Lima met it, heading past Tim Wiese. Game on, all within the early stages.

And then I fell asleep again. It was way too early in the morning for me to be watching football, and I had the memory of Arsenal’s disappointing draw doing nothing to keep my spirits up. Fortunately, I’ve got at DVR, so I could rewind it to check up on what happened. Which was more wayward finishing (a common theme in the past few games), Lima hitting the bar, and a goal from Tim Borowski to kill it off and leave us with the third 2-1 loss in as many games.

Sigh.

It’s not a good run of form. There’s no way to deny that. It’s not that we’re particularly dire, even- in all the games, we had chances to do much better. Our finishing is mostly atrocious. Marko Pantelic being out (his leg thing flared up again, and now it’s a question mark as to when he’ll be back) doesn’t help things, as no one seems to be stepping in to take his place. We’re now without four main players- Raffael came off at half-time with a hamstring injury- and it shows. We simply don’t have the squad to make up for the players that are missing. Pantelic, Patrick Ebert, and Steve von Bergen were all out against Bremen, and they make a big difference. Raffael will likely not play next week against Bochum. Which, without Pante as well, leaves us with absolutely nothing in offense.

It’s not a good time for injuries. Our 12-point cushion against relegation is now an 8-point one. We should be safe (she says, knocking wood), but it’s not a good time to be dropping points when we should be consolidating our position and thinking about the reinforcements to be brought in next season. And we seriously need them- the only reinforcement to be brought in on Saturday were Tobias Grahn, who is pretty but not much else, and Pal Dardai, who is nowhere near young. No one that could change a game, or even make it better. The squad is threadbare as it is and these injuries are not helping.

In the short-term, all we can do is hope that Lima or Okoronkwo remember how to score, or that Gojko Kacar (who, admittedly, looks fab otherwise) starts finding the net with his shots.

Cross your fingers.

Category: match reports

Tags: home, match reports, werder bremen

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