Effenberg wrote:I thought the whole performance was terrible. You did create some chances (as you would against this kind of opposition). That, of course, only highlighted the complete ineptitude of your strikers. In the end I was worried Werder might even get caught on the counter.
There's no excuse when you can't beat a team of this size/strength at home. I don't care what people say about there not being small countries/clubs anymore. This was as bad as Schalke's international performances. And now you have two tough away matches waiting.
If I were you I'd be pissed about the management. They're too stingy and that's why Werder is stuck playing second fiddle nationally and internationally. Do you want Werder to finish 2nd/3rd in the Bundesliga and be an 'also-ran' in the CL every year?
Pizzarro has (had) potential. He never lives up to it - for more than a game anyway. Getting him on a loan was the cheap solution that doesn't get your club anywhere. Look at who Hamburg attracted this year. And they aren't even in the CL!
Where's the CL money going anyway?
Well, like I already said I didn´t find it that bad. After the games in Bielefeld and Gladbach I was much more upset. The game last night was quite similar to the game against Cottbus, apart from the fact we didn´t score. I guess if we would have used one of our chances, most people would say now it was a "glanzloser Arbeitssieg".
Maybe you have a point "the whole performance was terrible" in relation to the (on paper) poor quality of Famagusta. But I think considering their tactics it doesn´t make much difference whether it´s Cottbus, Duisburg, Famagusta or Rangers etc. It´s all more or less the same.
With regard to Pizarro I still think he is a very good solution for us. (Of course it´s safe to say he wasn´t Allofs prefered choice.) He´ll will surely score a lot of goals for us. I mean if Sanogo (and Almeida) can score 10-12 goals plus some assists for us, Pizarro should be easily able to top that...Rummenigge said about him "Claudio hat Fähigkeiten, die man in der Bundesliga mit der Lupe suchen muss." And he is right. He´s an excellent footballer, much better than Sanogo for example.
I agree with you that our management seems to be too stingy. We should use every Euro to strenghten our squad, because we need the CL to compete with teams like Schalke, Hamburg, Dortmund etc. Without the CL we will immediately lose a lot of ground, which will be very difficult to recover. Two seasons in a row our squad has lost quality now (compared to the squad of 2006/2007). I'm already bemoaning that on the Bremen board since 1.5 years meanwhile.
However our biggest problem aren´t the tranfer fees, but the wages. Of course we had to increase the wages to keep the players we already have...and as you know, in the case of Klose and Borowski the money we had wasn´t enough. The problem here is that we can´t use the CL money for wages, other clubs can spend more here, even without CL. After all Bremen is not München, Hamburg, Dortmund...
With regard to becoming 2nd/3rd: It is indeed much better to achieve 5 times a 2nd/3rd place than becoming Champion two times and ending three times on place 4. With other words: I´m very happy with what we have achived during the last five years. Another 3rd place this season would be a great thing for us.
At the moment it unfortunately seems like it won´t be enough for a place among the top 3 and should it really come like that this will probably be our last CL participation for a long time, unless of course Allofs has bunkered enough money to do something like Bayern did last year.
Then other clubs can try to do it better. During the last 5 years we collected over 91% of the points Bayern collected in the same time. That will be the benchmark then, in the year 2014, should we still be around here then.
Home
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Maybe they can snatch a draw at home against Panathinaikos( who by the way have a much better team than last seasons) but that's it. But it's the first time a Cypriot team makes the group stage so I think they'll be pretty content having achieved that, don't think they have any more expectations to be honest.
*raises eyebrows*
