A simple but very useful site to kick this series off. Football-Lineups describes itself as a 'collaborative database' where fans can upload lineups from matches they've watched or attended. The slightly clunky design masks a very rich resource, perfect for researching teams you may not be familiar with.
A quick search for Hamburg brings up a short list of possible teams and with one click you're on the Hamburger SV home page. From here the first thing you can glean is the usual formation. Hamburger seem to have started the season mostly with a 4-2-3-1 formation but have used a 4-4-2 more often recently. It's also quick to see what kind of form they're in - 4 defeats in the last 5. The league table snapshot tells us that they're 9th and have a pretty poor away record (5 defeats in 9).
Clicking on the most recent match, at home to Bayer Leverkusen, brings up the match page and the most useful aspect of this site: the formations. The old school graphics show you how both teams lined up and also who was subbed and carded. The first thing I use this screen for is to identify who the central midfielders and full-backs are as they are often the highest scorers in Picklive (along with the centre-backs). It's also useful then to click through on a players name. Using Ze Roberto as an example I can see that actually the Leverkusen match was only the third time this season that he started on the left of midfield. He began the season mostly at central midfield but has been used more as a left-back recently. He's only been subbed once and has made 7 assists.
While there are better options elsewhere for many of these stats I do find this site especially good for researching teams that may not feature prominently on other sites. The formations are the killer feature here, something often overlooked on other sites, and, despite the poor interface, this site is a favourite of mine.
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