We’re back!

By: jhb | August 7th, 2009

I apologize for not writing earlier, but work has gotten the better of me lately. Luckily, all the important deadlines fell into the summer break, and just in time for the new season I’m up and running the Bochum Offside again. So what did we miss? Not much, in terms of transfers all news are old news, Johansson is the biggest signing this summer, we didn’t have too big losses. An interesting side note from he prep games, though: Marcel Koller has dropped Portuguese national team runner-up goalie Fernandes in favour of young Philip Heerwagen due to their performances in various meaningless matches (wins against two smallish swiss sides and against Trabzon). And with a name like “army-wagon”, who’s gonna stop him now?

The season began last week with the DFB cup, and we got yet another embarassing 1-0 win against some minnow, this year around it was Sportfreunde Lotte, which sounds more like an auld aunties’ bridge evening than a football club, but anyways. Mönchengladbach are visiting Bochum on Sunday at 3:30pm to kick off the season. Personally, I don’t expect to much from this season, but among the things that would make me happy are these two: With this stock of players, relegation will be an issue until the end, but can also easily be avoided well before the last week of the season, given what other contenders for the drop spots (I’m looking at you, Mainz) have. not. Second, this year could see Marcel Koller overtake the last 8 or so managers in terms of time spent at the club without being sacked, and I’d really like appreciate some continuity there. He doesn’t promise wonders like Neururer did, but he doesn’t underachieve either. Speaking of Neururer, this is 2009/10 and the year he promised some miracle or other to happen in Bochum. Well he’s been sacked six years ago, but let’s see how good a prophet he is anyway