We did it

By: jhb | September 25th, 2009

$Frank \"Funny\" Heinemann$ Andreas Luthe Nürnberg 0-1 Bochum! Against all odds, we go home with all points and without conceding a goal. I haven’t seen the match, but apparently Nürnberg refused to play football, which might have helped us a lot. It doen’t lessen the sweet taste of victory, though, and in particular the timing is perfect. The first proper Bundesliga match of interim coach Heinemann, coming from a 0-3 home bashing by Schalke 04 in the Cup, and with two key players still injured (Sestak with a broken hand, goalie Heerwagen with a broken jaw), the best we could hope for was to see a good fight. Turns out, Nürnberg was exactly the right away trip at the right time.

And most of all, in the past two matches, the utter unknown that is Andreas Luthe (the replacement keeper for Heerwagen from our reserves) looks a very promising candidate! Though at their age, he might not exactly be a Neuer or Adler – but given that he used to be n-th choice after any number of less-than-average keepers before, I expected someone like blunder-Vander. Quite the opposite! He was really good against Schalke (which might sound weird, but the goals were really due to terrible defensive work), and though I haven’t seen today’s match, the reports seem to indicate that a) he wasn’t hard pressed to perform by Nürnberg, b) the one time he was tested seriously he was there, and most importantly c) he didn’t produce any howlers, something any recent Bochum keeper was known to be capable of in games that even remotely looked like must-win. (and d): doesn’t he just look like the keen kid from the youth teams eager to move to the big stage and therefore deserving a chance ?)