Bundesliga - Stuttgart v Hertha Berlin

21 November 2009

Preview By Tipster X-Hunter (Turkey)

These teams were giving a serious fight for the Bundesliga championship last year. Now, Stuttgart is only one point away from relegation zone and guests, Hertha, are bottom of the league with six points distance to what would be their goal of this season after this terrible start. Bad phases are natural, important is how you react. Stuttgart got around radical behaviour which was in my opinion absolutely correct. They have a high quality team and its unlikely they will go like this the whole season. They believe that better times will come naturally and so they kept M. Babbel. Hertha did the opposite. After the success last season they would cut first of all budgets, planning small although participating in Europa League and almost Championsleague. The latter has been reason for so many things to go wrong. Success last year brought chaos to their system which was set for the middle of the table only, although having such ambitious coach with Favre. They made serious calculations for Champions League and when they failed they let it all go. They had a good team and a good coach, all you need for success. What have they done ? They let Pantelic go, Voronin go, sell master of defense Simunic and cut the budget. What kind of effect can this have on players and on coach when youre playing good achieving sth actually and then instead of beeing rewarded the opposite is done. They have dropped Favre and I can understand as this man has ambitions and cant waste his time at a team that rejects progress, I assume even that it was with intent by him. The low motivation is understandable for me in respect of the whole enterprise Hertha and it is very probable this will not change so soon.

To the game ...

First of all, its absolute mustwin situation for homeside. There has been a little improvement in their performance as they were able to defy FC Sevilla, drawing 1:1 in Spain. Gladbach was a tough away fixture to follow and despite having a bad day and hosts motivated, they again managed to stay unbeaten. Now many players are rested and injuries recovered. Khedira and Tasci are out for this game but are beeing well replaced by Niedermeier and Gebhart. Stuttgart will very probably start 4-1-2-1-2 with an extremely skilled attack and midfield. I expect attacking pressure right away as Hertha will surely field a defensive team with the injury bugs they have. The guests have many players missing. Ebert, Raffael, Dardai, Stein and Kringe beeing the most important ones from an even longer list. So the already weak Hertha attack has to come out now without the likes of important creative players from midfied like Raffael and Ebert. Hertha attack Wichniarek, Domchivski is not very potent anyway and its easy to envision they will now suck even more.

Simple homewin @ odds 1.65 should be correct. 2.88 for handicap @skybet is even above value. Since I am expecting a clear homewin ( maybe 3:0 ) my choice will be the latter. Medium stake.