Hoffenheim winger, Chinedu Obasi will complete a loan move to Schalke after the clubs agreed a €5m fee to make the move permanent. His contract at Hoffenheim ends in 2014. Schalke had expressed their interest in signing the Nigerian as a replacement for Jefferson Farfan, whose contract runs out at the end the season.

He joined the club in 2007 from Norwegian side, FK Lyn. He played a big part in Hoffenheim’s single season in the 2. Bundesliga and immediately made an impact in the Bundesliga scoring 6 goals and bagging 4 assists as Hoffenheim finished the season in 7th. This season however, Obasi has failed to find the net in the league. His solitary goal this season came in the DFB Pokal win against FC Köln.

Obasi expressed his gratitude towards Hoffenheim saying, “I love Hoffenheim, because they have helped me as a footballer. But somehow I think that it is time to move on. ” The relationship between Obasi and manager, Holger Stanislawski seemed to have deteriorated during the first half of the season and could have played a small part in Obasi’s departure from the club.

We wish Obasi the best of luck at Schalke.

Hoffenheim have been drawn in a home match against against 2. Bundesliga side SpVgg Greuther Fürth. The quarter final match will take place at the Rhein-Neckar Arena on February 7 or 8, 2012. The dates of the fixtures are yet to be confirmed by the DFB. Elsewhere, Holstein Kiel will face Dortmund, Stuttgart will host Bayern Munich and Hertha Berlin and Borussia Mönchengladbach will face off in probably the most even fixture of the quarter finals.

Greuther Fürth beat their fierce rivals, Nürnberg to get to this stage of the competition. After hovering around the top of the table for the best part of a decade, Fürth are now lying in second place in the 2. Bundesliga. On their current form they could push for their first promotion to the Bundesliga. Fürth are the best defensive side in the 2. Bundesliga so far this season, only conceding 14 goals and strike pairing Olivier Occean and Christopher Nöthe have a combined 20 goals between them. They aren’t a team to be taken lightly and could easily cause an upset. The match falls after a home game against Augsburg and so we should be able to send out a full strength squad against the 2. Bundesliga side.

EDIT: The dates have been confirmed and Hoffenheim will host Fürth on February 8th, 2012.

After the disappointment against Hertha Berlin on the weekend, it was important for the team to go into the winter break on a high. A Pokal tie with Bundesliga newboys Augsburg was a great chance to do that. In the end, it was a match day which gave us little surprises. Bayern and Dortmund did their best to lose but somehow managed to squeeze past their lower league opposition, while Nürnberg lost to arch rivals Fürth and decided to attacked their fans. Typical stuff. And it was a fairly typical game from Hoffenheim too.

The match in its entirety was quite uneventful but there were moments that worried and moments that gave hope. Hoffenheim’s main issue is that we play a strong first half and then fail to build on that in the second half. So when the master himself, Sejad Salihovic, smacked in that brilliant freekick, the hope was that we would push on with it and finish Augsburg off. The chances did come, but they were terribly wasted as usual. Instead, the expected Augsburg goal followed and it was very lax defending to allow Torsten Oehrl to sneak in and finish the rebound. In a way the goal coming before the half was a good thing. That allowed Stanislawski to adjust and it looked to have paid off.

It didn’t take long for Salihovic to strike again. Instead of scoring from the freekick however, he provided a perfect near post ball for his compatriot, Ibisevic to squeeze in. The team was able to push on well from that but unfortunately no chances were put away.  We also saw Babel pick up a knock after a clash with Callsen-Bracker and he had to be replaced by a rejuvinated Boris Vuckevic. Hopefully the injury wasn’t anything severe and he was just taken off so as not to aggravate the knock.

The most interesting move of the half was actually a tactical one by Stanislawski. He took Peniel Mlapa off and brought on a much more defensive minded Daniel Williams. It ended up giving Hoffenheim much more solidarity when the eventual Augsburg assault began in the last five or so minutes. It was a very important win that ensures a spot in the quarter finals of the Pokal, where Hoffenheim lost to Energie Cottbus last season.

And as Andy Black said in the post match conference, “In the Cup, it’s all or nothing.” With just a handful of teams remaining, it is our one realistic chance of winning a trophy. Hopefully, the team takes the competition more seriously than it has in the past and pushes towards a much better result in this years tournament.

It is a difficult ask though, especially since we could most likely have Isaac Vorsah out until March. He picked up a three match ban after being sent off against Hertha, which is a curious decision in itself considering professional fouls only warrant a one match ban. He will also be leaving for the African Cup of Nations soon and if Ghana do get far in the tournament he won’t be back until at least late January or early February.  With Compper also out injured you never know if he could face a set back on his return and leave us in a very sticky situation. Even with Dietmar Hopp’s chequebook firmly shut we could still bring in a player on loan. Much like with David Alaba last season, having a fresh young defender could provide great cover should we find ourselves in the worst case scenario.

Either way, as difficult as the last few months have been, we can look forward to 2012 with a lot of optimism. Sometimes we forget that this is the youngest team in the league and they need time to gain the mindset of some of their veteran teammates. The fickleness of fans does shock me though. While the team has given up easy points we aren’t in any sort of real danger. All this can be corrected by a strong Rückrunde.

Hopefully yesterday’s post shed some light on Leverkusen and how their season has been. On the Hoffenheim front however everything seems to be in chaos. With everything that has gone on this week it could cause quite a problem against a team we are still looking to get our first win against. Hoffenheim are still looking for their first win in four games while Leverkusen are on a four game unbeaten run. So it is tough to remain optimistic ahead of this match.

The problems started after the very frustrating draw against Freiburg when Tom Stark criticized Ryan Babel. Even though he claimed it was a morale boosting act it could have gone horribly wrong but luckily Babel took it on the chin. The criticism itself was a bit harsh. The team has struggled as a unit and pointing fingers isn’t going to help change that. Add to that the fact that along with Firmino, Babel has been one of the few who have consistently performed well in the last few games and so the comments really were unwarranted. Initially, manager Ernst Tanner had agreed with Starke about Babel’s form and confidence but then Starke was eventually fined for his comments and rightfully so.

Then Stanislawski announced that he would be dropping both Obasi and Firmino from the squad because both players were late for training. While it’s good to have a decent level of discipline, the team often overdoes it. Last season we were on the verge of losing Salihovic because of the fallout from a training ground bust up. There were several incidents before that as well that involved important players and sometimes it really seems like the players are being treated like children, being given timeouts in the form of individual training sessions away from the rest of the team.

So when a player like Firmino, who is an all important game changer, gets suspended on what is presumably his first offence, you have to question the management’s thinking. At a time when the team is struggling, it just comes off as a foolish move. Now we’re going to most probably see Salihovic in the attacking midfield role. A role which requires a lot of mobility that Salihovic lacks. The tactic revolves around players like Firmino and Obasi who are very mobile and more importantly interchangeable, another quality that the attacking replacements lack, throwing a spanner in the works. There is always the possibility that Sigurdsson will be given the call ahead of Tobias Weis, meaning that we will actually have a proper attacking midfielder, allowing Salihovic to sit back and play his game the way he does it. Sigurdsson has struggled with form for a while and could be the main reason for him not being picked and if last season’s top scorer does get picked for this match he needs to prove himself and force his way back into the team. When Sigurdsson and Firmino played as a duo, we saw Hoffenheim play some of their best football, the only thing that was lacking was that of a finisher. That problem has continued even with Ibisevic back in the team so there’s really not much you can say about how we can improve that situation.

We’ll continue to play our 4-2-3-1 with either Weis and Sigurdsson coming in for Firmino and Musona most likely replacing Obasi, although Boris Vukcevic, who has finally made his way back into the first team since his injury last season, could make the start. However the team lines up this looks like a very difficult clash and you couldn’t blame a person for being pessimistic. Still, Leverkusen’s home record isn’t the best and for a team long overdue for a win, this could just be the chance to end that streak.

I’d like to thank the brilliant Vampy who agreed to write this in depth look on our opponents for Friday. Enjoy!

Match Preview from Bayer Leverkusen Perspective

Resurging Bayer Leverkusen will welcome Big Stan’s Hoffenheim — who are win-less since their 1-0 victory against ‘Gladbach on 22nd of October — this Friday to kick-off match day 15 of Bundesliga season. Both teams look set to end the first half of the season as higher in the league-table as possible in terms of their respective expectations so that the start of second-half of the season can be less-panic and less catch-up football, and all.

Bayer Leverkusen season so far in Bundesliga

Defeat in season opener against Mainz at Coface Arena wasn’t the first loss of the season as Bayer Leverkusen started their season without some integral members of their squad, namely René Adler and Tranquillo Barnetta. If it wasn’t much of the misery, the back-up goal-keeper Fabian Giefer suffered concussion against Mainz and suddenly it looked like the end of the world for Leverkusen before the season even had started. The club acted instantly as everyone knew that Yelldell was a no-no after his nightmare against Dynamo Dresden in DFB-Pokal. Then Leno happened.

Clean-sheet debuting against Werder Bremen, Leno gave some impressive performances at the back that he would go on and accumulate two more clean-sheets against Stuttgart and Dortmund that eventually started the saga that what if this young lad moves to BayArena permanently — that saga just ended two days ago as Leno has completed a permanent move to Leverkusen, leaving King Adler with no option but to move somewhere else (his recent injury-list has deserted him big time but when he’s fit, there probably only few goal keepers who can better him on his day).

Coming back to the matches; Bayer Leverkusen’s second defeat of the season came in derby-encounter against Cologne in mid-September which they lost 4-1 and that was followed with a 3-0 defeat at the hands of mighty  Bayern. It looked apparent by then that something’s not working at the heart-of-the-defense and Robin Dutt had to go with some changes and later he called upon Friedrich — who has been pretty impressive so far and has steadied the ship in many ways with his experience and has brought in some calmness at the back — to pair with Toprak. The defense problem is still a problem and Leverkusen have addressed this problem with a signing of hot defensive prospect Philipp Wollscheid who moves to Leverkusen in summer 2012.

After that defeat against Bayern, Leverkusen have lost only one (1-0 defeat against Schalke) match in the seven matches they have played since then. The match-day results in Bundesliga so far:

Mainz 2-0 Leverkusen; Leverkusen 1-0 Werder; Stuttgart 0-1 Leverkusen; Leverkusen 0-0 Dortmund; Augsburg 1-4 Leverkusen; Leverkusen 1-4 Cologne; Bayern 3-0 Leverkusen; Leverkusen 3-1 Wolfsburg; Gladbach 2-2 Leverkusen; Leverkusen 0-1 Schalke; Freiburg 0-1 Leverkusen; Leverkusen 2-2 HSV; Kaiserslautern 0-2 Leverkusen; Hertha 3-3 Leverkusen

Formation & Tactics:

Basically, Bayer Leverkusen play 4-2-3-1 but if the wind is blowing hot, Dutt kind of experiments between many other formations like 4-4-2 and sometimes 4-1-4-1. Despite having the likes of Schürrle and Sam on the wings with the support of Kadlec and Castro from the back, Leverkusen prefer to unlock the teams through the middle. The likes of Rolfes and magnificent Lars Bender in the middle of the park with Michael Ballack just behind the striker, it tells the tale of why is it so. Bayer Leverkusen like to have most of the ball-possession and have mostly out-muscled the opposition when it comes to ball-contacts in matches.

The defense after Friedrich’s inclusion looks calmer and the midfield have performed so well over the course of the season under the visible leadership of Michael Ballack while the only concern which grew as the season progressed was the misfiring attacking threat. When almost half-of-season has passed and the likes of Schürrle and Sam, who have 2 and 3 goals to their names respectively, find it difficult to hit the back of the net then surely you begin to feel that it could have been much better. We are not even putting Renato Augusto and Barnetta in this equation as they are sidelined with knee-injuries.

Kießling has three goals to his names as yet and looks shadow of his past but still is very important for Leverkusen. This all brings us to one man who has been ‘an assassin’ in recent weeks in front of the opposition goal. With five goals under his bag, Eren Derdiyok has started to heal the goal-famine of attacking-front on his own. Putting in some impressive performances, Eren Derdiyok looks to have a season to remember as things have started clicking in his way and the man hasn’t disappointed in past few weeks.

Match Build-Up:

• Since the promotion of Hoffenheim in 2008 to Bundesliga, Bayer Leverkusen have never lost against them.
• Making some awesome comebacks and impressive wins down the road, Leverkusen have been slight weaker in contrast at home this season.
• Of all the Friday matches which Leverkusen have played this season, they have won all of them.
• Adler, Barnetta, and Augusto are long-term absentees but Toprak won’t be available for this match as he suffered an injury against Hertha Berlin while Balitsch remains doubtful

Freiburg have been one of the poorest teams this season and have been uninspiring even at the best of times. In fact our game plan could simply consist of two words, ‘Stop Cisse’. They rely on the Senegalese striker far too much and his 8 goals so far this season have kept Freiburg from falling into complete turmoil. Stopping them offensively should be fairly straightforward as a result. That being said, we may have taken Kaiserslautern’s weak offence for granted and we all know how that one ended. In the last meeting, under Robin Dutt, high flying Freiburg were tough to beat, especially the way Hoffenheim played in the second round. However, this time at home and new manager Marcus Sorg’s tactical changes not working out, this is a great chance to find some form once again.

Player for player it’s safe to say that Hoffenheim are the stronger side going into this match but there are various threats that this Freiburg team do pose. The one that goes without saying is Papiss Cisse of course. The one man army was our downfall last season as we struggled and eventually fell to a strong Freiburg side. The other men to look out for in attack are Anton Putsila and Cerdric Makiadi who are both good dribblers and provide support for Cisse. Freiburg prefer attacking from out wide and so holding back Putsila will be very important. It should be easy enough to cut them off considering the defensively line Freiburg play though.

The club’s major weakness is their incredibly deep back line. As long as it’s in use, opposition players will be able to consistently find space to exploit. The deep backline forces the midfield to drop back in an attempt to close down in their half. As that happens, Cisse gets isolated up front and this could make Freiburg a lot easier to defend against. It also leaves massive gaps in the final third that can be exploited.

As an added bonus, Freiburg’s backline also tend to remain flat so it leaves a good free area on the edge of the box where our midfielders could ghost in and steal a goal or two. Although for that to be taken advantage of our finishing will have to improve tenfold from the last month or two. The team has only scored three goals in the last seven matches and the finishing problem is a really clear one that needs to be worked on in training at least if there aren’t going to be any signings made. The hope is that we can maybe get in a more mobile striker on a loan during the winter break if no money is going to be spent.

In terms of team news, Andreas Beck is out suspended and Edson Braafheid will be doubtful for the match meaning Germamerican duo Johnson and Williams will start in the fullback positions. Tobias Weis had a good outing last week completing most of his passes so we could see Roberto Firmino coming off the bench once again. Although it should be pointed out that when Firmino did finally make it onto the pitch against HSV the team were able to create a lot more chances. As long as Salihovic and Weis are playing at the same time there probably isn’t going to be many venturing runs up the field as you’d see with Firmino. So with Salihovic guaranteed to be starting now that he’s back to full fitness we should see Firmino start next to him as we’d have a deeper playmaker in the Bosnian and the young Brazilian can be a more advanced playmaker and get in on the goalscoring action as well.

Again, this isn’t a match we should be taking for granted but at the same time you would expect a home win against a weak Freiburg side.

With decision day on Kevin Volland’s future closing in there are quite a few things to consider. Volland had agreed to join Hoffenheim in the summer of 2010. The club allowed him to stay on at his current employers 1860 Munich for two more seasons with the hope that he would develop a lot more with regular first team football rather than struggling to break through the Hoffenheim squad as a teenager. Hoffenheim ended up adding a clause allowing them to cut short the deal and bring Volland in before the winter break in 2011.

As things stand Volland has scored 9 goals already this season and has lived up to his billing as a deadly poacher. Much like Ibisevic, Volland’s brilliant positional sense has led to his fairly prolific run for 1860 recently. At first thought it would be counter productive to pull him out of Munich when he’s on some good form. Although you could easily say that he could carry that form and really set the Bundesliga alight. And there’s obviously the worry that he won’t really be able to adapt to the Bundesliga. He might end up like Schipplock for example, playing for the U23s and really struggling to break into the first team set up.

In fact, the youngster himself had expressed his desire to stay in Munich till the summer, allowing him a full season of first team football and then getting a fresh start with Hoffenheim in the summer. A chance to really settle in with his new teammates thanks to a full preseason. And that’s not the only reason stated for leaving it to the summer. The club has a such a variety of attacking players but there are gaps in that argument. Players like Babel and Obasi are simply wingers and so they don’t factor in. Players like Mlapa and Schipplock have struggled to really make an impact up front while Musona being in a new country needs time to settle in. Even though he has impressed on a few occasions there is still an air of doubt around him as he’s yet to make his first start in the league. That leaves only Ibisevic, who has three goals in the last three games, in the way.

There was the worry early on was that we might be missing Obasi and maybe Musona for the Cup of Nations, meaning Volland would be a necessity. Fortunately or unfortunately, however you’d like to see it, Obasi and Musona’s respective countries failed to qualify for the tournament. So bringing in the young striker from 1860 isn’t of utmost importance at the moment. But taking all that into consideration would Kevin Volland really struggle to break through at Hoffenheim?

Stanislawski has been very keen on bringing him in and Volland has been a little more supportive of the idea as well. Just days ago he said that it’s a win-win situation, either he gets first team football at 1860 or he makes the step up to the Bundesliga. And of course he is very right, which makes it all the more important to make the right choice.

Manager Ernst Tanner has his doubts about this saying that we already have seven quality strikers and on top of what I said before, the team has struggled to score with Ibisevic being the only man to score for Hoffenheim in the last three league games. So is Stanislawski’s insistence of cutting Volland’s time at 1860 short so bad? Probably not. We’ve seen in the last few weeks how important it is to have an out and out striker on the field.

So whichever way the decision goes, I am quite excited about the prospect of having Volland in this team. Whether it’s this week or next summer the wait might well have been worth it. Although the hope is that he will join immediately and help quell the team’s recent inability to score.

The match was quite uneventful in the first half. We did get the lead from Ibisevic midway through the half. Braafheid’s initial cross was cleared right back to him and he smashed a lower cross perfectly for Ibisevic. He had no problem putting it away and that’s no suprise. So the increasing rumours from England about the Blackburn link is a bit worrying. Obviously, Ibisevic has cleared the air a few weeks earlier by saying, “I treasure what I have got in Hoffenheim. I have been here from the march from the second division into the top flight and that makes you feel like a part of things. I feel very much at home here after over four years.” in an interview with RNZ a few weeks earlier.

So hopefully there’s nothing to worry about. If you remember, he was very close to joining at the end of the transfer window in August. But with his injury he wasn’t able to pass his medical and remained a Hoffenheim player. And that turned out for the better. He’s already won us 4 points in the last 3 games and his presence would be sorely missed. There was a lot of expectation on Musona to pick up the reigns but it has been a fairly slow start for him even though he has impressed with his ability.

Back to the match. The second half was all Lautern and it wasn’t pretty to watch. While Hoffenheim did have a fair share of attacks nothing really amounted to anything. The Kouemaha goal came out of almost nothing. As the ball was chested down by a teammate he smashed it on the volley and caught Starke just off his line. And in a way Kaiserslautern deserved that as they had the upper hand the entire match and it was just a question of when they were going to score.

So in the end the match was a disappointment and the team is still struggling to really find some solid form. As many people have said, Stani included, we’ve been very “mediocre”. After the match, Stanislawski said, “The only consolation from today’s game is that we came away with a point. We were poor today; I’m very disappointed with our performance. We’re playing in one of the strongest leagues in Europe and we need to do better, but the boys will be better in our next game, I’m sure of that.”

It’s really great to have a manager like this who constantly wants his team to do better and hopefully we see that in our next match. We will have to wait for that however as international fixtures are in the way for this week.

Kaiserslautern are very much a team on the up. After a poor start to the season they have managed to pick up their form in the last few games even if they have been scrappy affairs. Last week’s away outing for them ended in a draw after a very defensive performance by the Red Devils. Looking at this match it is very possible that Lautern will employ the same tactics.

Against HSV, Kaiserslautern threw most of their men back in defence and proved to be quite difficult to break down. They don’t heavily rely on attack and stating it like that might just be a bit of kindness on my part. It’s clear to see that it’s a major area they struggle in. They are only saved the embarrassment of being the worst team in front of goal by newly promoted Augsburg. While they might not win any goal scoring competitions, Kurz’ men lead the charts for indiscipline. A place not too unfamiliar for the Hoffenheim fan so we can expect yet another physical match at home. With the match against Gladbach showing the steel that this team has, there’s definitely going to need to be the same level of fight to beat Lautern.

Kaiserslautern are very aggressive in their defending and with the amount of men they have back, they pressure the ball well. They do stay quite compact at the back however, leaving space on the wings for our wide players to take advantage of. Going down the middle might be a tough ask because if they do play as defensively as they did last week, the combination of numbers and that aggression their defence is able to stop most chances that come their way. Yet they often show that they struggle when the ball is whipped in from out wide. With a player like Ibisevic in the box we can hope for at least some of those chances from out wide taken advantage of. There’s no doubt that the pace out wide will create good chances for the ball to be crossed in.

Their weakness at the back is that the defence is often prone to making individual errors and taking those mistakes and turning them into goals should give us a comfortable victory. Still you can’t take for granted how that will happen. As with a defensive set up it’ll make Hoffenheim commit more men forward leaving gaps for the counter. I’d be an advocate for using two strikers in this match. An Ibisevic/Musona duo could prove to be quite deadly if they are able to get the right delivery into the box with both their poaching ability.

Key Players

You cannot even begin to understate Christian Tiffert’s importance to this Kaiserslautern team. Almost all forms of offence from Lautern come through their captain. And he sets the tempo for their attacks as well. Players are constantly looking for the first time pass and they regularly string together some breathtaking plays even if they don’t amount to anything in the end.

In fact, Kaiserslautern’s attacking game relies on it a lot. They are very capable of playing in compact areas as their support for the man with the ball is very strong. There’s always a player in short passing distance before the ball is even at the feet of the eventual passer. It’s definitely something to be wary of and will undoubtedly lead to some physicality on our side as well.

Team news ahead of the match suggests that Beck will be out injured, leaving the right fullback spot up for grabs between Johnson and Ibertsberger. There’s also the return of Salihovic to lift spirits. With that being said, there’s definitely going to be a lot of steel in both squads and we can expect a fast paced, physical match.