Week Seven: We are top, you are bottom

Hello, I’m standing in for Duffman this week while he tears his hair out moving house.

Leverkusen continued their good start with a 2-1 win at Nurnburg. Still looking for their first home win, only Cottbus have had worse start than Nurnberg.

Poor old Cottbus must have thought they were on the brink of something to kick-start their season when they went in at half-time still holding Bayern at 0-0. Sadly for them the Bavarian Behemoth awoke, said "do you know who I am?" and promptly spanked five past them, Klose bagging his first hat-trick for his new club in the process. Eight goals in six games for Miro is making the E15 million paid for him in the summer look like a bargain.

The top two face each other this Saturday. Bayern can’t stop scoring but Leverkusen haven’t conceded at home so far – something’s bound to give, and it should be a cracker.

Dortmund seem to have forgotten the lesson they taught Werder the other week by getting that 3-0 result reversed by Hamburg. BVB's second defeat on the spin sees them sliding back down to 12th. Werder up an down season continues with 1-1 draw away to Wolfburg, Diego scoring for the second game in a row obviously had some frank and open discussions following the Dortmund debacle.

Friday’s game is Schalke v Hertha. Duffman and I went to Gelsenkirchen to watch the corresponding fixture four seasons back, a comfortable win for the home side that saw Hertha reduced to 9 men early in the second half. Waiting for our train back to Cologne we watched the traveling fans being herded on to their shockingly nostalgic rolling stock for the long trip back. I can still hear the lone proud fan leaning out of the window hoarsely repeating “Hertha” over and over again as it slowly clanked down the track. He’s probably still there.

While both teams have had good starts to the season Schalke go in as the form team following a healthy 2-0 win away to Duisberg, while Hertha suffered an embarrassing 3-1 home defeat to lowly Rostock. Those two games made up two of the six away wins in the midweek round of fixtures, the others (not already mentioned) being Hannover’s 2-0 win at Bielefeld and Karlsruhe’s 1-0 over Frankfurt.

Only Stuttgart managed to emulate Bayern by winning at home; not as spectacularly though, a solitary goal giving them the points over Bochum.

Results and table are here

Week Six: Life without Miro

Last season, Bremen were fantastic going forward. Unlucky to be drawn with Chelsea and Barca in the Champions League they still managed to make an impact with their quality attacking play. In fact, many in Bremen still feel that the Bundesliga title was theirs to lose last year. Although Schalke can probably lay a greater claim to that dubious honour.

This season, Bremen have had to adjust to life without Miro Klose and have stuttered. The player that signed to replace the German international, Boubacar Sanogo, has scored 4 goals so far but probably hasn't managed to fill the void. Apparently an awful lot of the gameplay involved Klose and filling that kind of gap is not something that can be done just through personnel change. Another factor in Bremen's less than Stella start had to be the leggy performance of their Brazilian play-maker Diego.

Last Saturday, Werder faced the Stuttgart at the Weserstadion. The champions were smarting from a bizarre defeat to the Rangers club in Glasgow last week in which they had dominated and would have been keen to re-assert their credentials. They didn't. Werder ran out 4-1 winners. Sanogo was on the score-sheet again, as was the excellent Hugo Almeida with a brace. Werder manager Thomas Schaaf has taken some stick for his teams relatively poor start (extraordinary when you consider what he's achieved there) and was the epitome of po-faced non-enjoyment of a thorough tonking of the Champions. Good for him. Still, Bremen need to work on that offside trap. Very creaky.

Stuttgart have yet to win away this season. Neither have Rostock. In fact, Rostock had failed to pick up as much as a point so far this season until Saturday when they cleaned out Duisberg in a convincing 2-0 victory. Apparently they looked pretty good. Perhaps a corner has been turned.

There were two away wins on Sunday: Leverkusen beat Hannover 3-0. The third being a penalty from a shocking dive by Gekas. Bayern showed Karlsruhe the door of their own home with an excellent 4-1 win. Luca Toni scored a beauty.

Improving nicely are Hamburg and the reformed want-away Raphael van der Vaart who score the only goal in the game against Nurberg who must be tugging at their collars by now. We'll gloss over Bochum's 0-0 dull-fest with Frankfurt.

For Cottbus the writing is already on the wall. A miserable 2-1 defeat to the equally miserable Wolfsburg did for their manager Petrik Sander who was sacked the following day despite still carrying the support of the fans.

Finally, last season's fellow title challengers Schalke are finding their groove with a 3-0 win at home to the Admirable Bielfeld who, after being bigged up by this correspondent last week looked pretty hapless. Clearly they fell foul of the curse of the Bundesbag. "Damn you Bundesbag!" said the Bielefeld coach Ernst Middendorp... not really.

That's it. Results and tables here. For more on the Petrik Sander's sacking go here.

Week Five: Ostpolitik

I've got a soft spot for the Admirable Bielefeld. A small club in the Westphalen region of Germany, they have been perennial yo-yos throughout their recent history. The longest they ever stayed in the Bundesliga was in the early 80's for five seasons and since their most recent promotion in 2004 they have successfully punched above their weight and seen bigger, more established clubs such as FC Koln, Kaiserslautern and Monchengladbach relegated to 2 Bundesliga when others thought it might be them.

This season, Bielefeld have had a dream start. They currently lie second in the table, one point behind a stuttering Bayern (who fought hard for a draw at home to Schalke) after an emphatic 4-2 win over Hansa Rostock. No doubt their position is owed, in part to the poor start to the season of the contenders for the title but still, Bielefeld's opening matches has given them an excellent chance of pushing on for a UEFA spot this year. If they can just keep the momentum going...

Rostock themselves lie bottom and pointless in the table beneath Woeful Cottbus. Both former east European teams have the whiff of Derby about them and you have to wonder if there poor showing in the top division has anything to do with their location in the former communist block.

Immediately above them are a club with no such excuses. Wolfsburg rolled out the big basket of wonga with "Transfer kitty" written on the side and so for Felix Magath's team are a right bag of nails. A 2-1 home defeat was their latest atrocity at the hands of newly promoted Karlsruhe who are close to living the dream right now.

Elsewhere, Dortmund continued their revival after an excellent 3-0 win over a 10 man Bremen. It was a tasty encounter which left some neutrals wondering how only one player was sent off. Champions Stuttgart started their week with a heartening 3-0 win over the aforementioned Cottbus. Then had a heart-wrenching midweek as they lost to a Scottish team in the Chumps League. Still Mario Gomez is back among the goals.

Back at the top and Frankfurt are another traditionally mid table team (in recent years at least) that have had a great start to the season. They occupy third spot and beat Hamburg 2-1 at the weekend despite the best efforts of Hamburg's brilliant Raphael van der Vaart. Hertha Berlin were pleased with their away win at Duisberg.

German Cup holders Nurnberg are having a rotten time. Their only win so far has been against Rubbish Rostock. However, home defeats have not dampened their crowd's enthusiasm despite going down 2-0 at half time to an entertaining Hannover 96 team. Their loyalty was rewarded with a rousing second half come-back. Marek Mintal grabbed the last gasp equaliser to make it 2-2. "It's Mintal fresh" said Nurnberg coach Hans Meyer. At least he did in my world.

That's it. Results, tables and assorted nonsense here.

Week Four: Back on your heads

Unrequited rivalries can be tricky things. Remember when Birmingham were promoted to the Premier League a few years ago after having been out of the top flight for years and played Villa for the first time in ages? It was a hilarious match which ended with a 1-0 defeat for Villa who were favorites to win. Needless to the say the victory starved Blue-noses were positively shrill with glee.

Imagine then, Stuttgart's concern as, last weekend, they travelled to bitter rivals Karlsruhe who have been exiled in Bundesliga 2 for nine years. The champions have had a poor start to the season and the last thing they needed was a trip to their rivals who were in the mood for blood. Karlsruhe won the game 1-0 in front of a jubilant Wildparkstadion and Stuttgart's early morning hangover shows no sign of abating. With the Chumps League around the corner the Swabians are in danger of blowing their season before it really gets going.

Elsewhere, Bayern counted the cost of the injured Luca Toni by dropping points for the first time this season at Hamburg. The 1-1 draw has come as a minor relief to non-Munich fans who I think were worried that their league was about to turn into Scotland or France. Hamburg were some people's pre-season tips to challenge Bayern and holding the Bavarians will be a tremendous boost to them.

Elsewhere, Hertha's home win over Wolfsburg had the away team's manager Felix Magath so desperate for excuses that he put the poor performance down a delayed train journey to the capital. The German national rail service are proud sponsors of HSC and naturally Magath suspected collusion. Given the excellent reputation the D-Bahn has for efficiency and punctuality, he may have a point.

The big Ruhr derby twixt Schalke and Leverkusen ended in a 1-1 draw. Werder Bremen made it two wins in two against Frankfurt. A late goal from Andy Wolf saved a point and Nurnberg's blushes at Cottbus and the Admirable Bielefeld's early season bubble of love has been well and truly burst by Duisberg.

Finally, Dortmund steadied their rocky start to the season with their first away win. Mind you it was against Rostok which barely counts but hey... if your'e in the pooh-cart, you'll happily step over a tramp to get out.

That's it. Results and table here.