Stuttgart are on their 3rd Coach this season and the latest one, Bruno Labbadia, recorded a 5-1 win over Odense in the Europa League in his first match in charge. The Stuttgart players are bouncing around training like Bambi according to bundesliga.de, apprently Bruno makes his players feel all warm and gooey inside. And he'll need to as Stuttgart are languishing, one place off the foot of the table.
That's not to say there haven't been some good times already this season. They've handed out a pair of spankings to teams around them in the table. They tonked Werder Bremen 6-0 back in September and then Monchengladbach 7-0 in November. Add those two to the Odense result and this team seems like it can put a team away when they're in the mood (and possibly when the other team isn't very good).
Bayern Munich are also having a poor season but for them that means being 6th rather than 2nd bottom. Their away record is poor, having only won once on their travels, picking up 6 points in total from 7 games. It seems that it's only their home record that's keeping them as high as 6th, they've won 5 of the last 5 in Munich. In contrast their last 5 away games have seen 2 defeats and 3 draws.
So, with Stuttgart preening to impress their new boss and Bayern getting travel sick there could be a chance of an upset today. Hopefully for the home side that chance will excite the fans as they indulged in a silent protest during the mid-week Europa victory.
Stuttgart tend to average just under 50% of possession in their home games although they sometimes like to go slightly mad and take just 37% of the ball (perversely that was in their 6-0 win over Bremen) or gobble up 61% of it (more understandably the 7-0). Bayern on the other hand like to gobble up possession and do nothing with it (possibly because they insist on fielding Gomez?). They had 68% of the ball in losing away to Schalke and 73% and 60% when drawing away with Monchengladbach and Leverkusen respectively.
So, we could well see Bayern dominating the ball but Stuttgart still nicking a result. In Picklive terms this suggests going strong on Bayern players but maybe with one eye on a few goals being scored. With no Picklive history for Stuttgart I've had a quick root around bundesliga.de to work out the main players' minutes per touch ratios. This shortlist is based on players who have played 500 minutes or more (otherwise it would've taken ages...) and score 1.5 or less - the lower the score the better:
Trasch (1436 minutes, 1156 touches) 1.24 mins per touch
Boka (965, 751) 1.28
Molinaro (792, 573) 1.38
Kuzmanovic (923, 645) 1.43
Gentner (1328, 889) 1.49
Delpierre (804, 539) 1.49
Unsurprisingly all of those players tend to play in central midfield or at full-back with the exception of Delpierre (centre-back). Boka and Gentner have been known to play on the left of midfield so it may be wise to check the line-ups when they're announced. I would restrict my choice to those 6 above or their direct replacements (Delpierre faces a late fitness test after a week on the Lemsip).
Frustratingly I can't get the Bayern stats off of bundesliga.de (tech glitch?) so I'm relying on their solitary Picklive game for inspiration; a 4-2 defeat of Freiburg in Munich. Stripping the goals and assists out we end up with the following players recording 50 points or more:
Lahm 79
Tymoshchuk 77
Schweinsteiger 69
Pranjic 58
Demichelis 55
Ottl 55
Unsurprisngly those 6 made up the back 4 and central midfield pair (Schweinsteiger & Ottl) in that game. Applying that to the expected lineup for this afternoons match leaves you with Lahm, Contento (full-backs), Tymoshchuck, Breno (centre-backs), van Bommel and Schweinsteiger (central mid)
So in summary I'm recommending picking across the central midfield and full-backs for both teams with the addition of Tymoshchuck. And then guessing where the goals will come from and adapting accordingly. My Big Team will probably look something like this: Schweinsteiger, Tymoshchuck, Lahm, Trasch and Molinaro.
A couple of notes, the new manager Labbadia made 2 subs on 60 minutes and 1 on 71 in mid-week, could be a slight worry for the Big Game. If penalties feature then Gentner has scored 1 for Stuttgart this season and Lahm two for Bayern. Gomez and Schweinsteiger have both missed pens this season. Top goal scorers are Pogrebnyak with 5 and Gomez with 9.
Good luck!
by BensBulls
(Ben Wraith)
No comments:
Post a Comment