Season Review 2008/2009

Season 2008/09 review

Way back in August 2008, summer time, the living was easy, Germany had had a reasonably successful Euro2008 losing in the final to Spain 1-0. HSV were starting the new season without Van Der Vaart and Zidan. In their place came Petric (from Dortmund) and Jansen (from Bayern). There was also a new coach and it was a face familiar to English fans: ex-Spurs manager Martin Jol had taken over from his fellow Dutchman Huub Stevens who had returned home to coach PSV Eindhoven.

HSV rolled into the country retreat of Ingolstadt to take on the local team in the 1^st round of the DFB Pokal. The opponents were on a bit of a high after winning promotion to the 2^nd division. It was as we say a “potential banana skin” and HSV were nearly caught out. But we recovered from a half time deficit to win 3-1 and we were on our way.

The policy of giving opponents a goal (or 2) start was to be repeated several times. Sometimes we were able to turn it round, other times we weren't.

In the league we gave Bayern a 2-0 start and came back to draw 2-2. Then we beat Karlsruhe 2-1 (only a few weeks after ending the previous season with a 7-0 win over them) and allowed Bielefeld a 2-0 start (we came back to win 4-2) and also gave Leverkusen a 2-0 start (we came back to win 3-2)

After the win over Leverkusen we were top of the league for the first time in 9 years. Only September but already we started dreaming of a party in front of the Rathaus in May. It was a dream which was to come back again and again over the next 8 months before the season ended as every other season for the past 20 years. Without any party at the Rathaus. A warning sign of our lack of ambition came when Vincent Kompany was sold on transfer deadline day to Manchester City

As so often, as soon as we started dreaming we hit problems: a visit to Wolfsburg and this time we could not pull back the deficit and ended up with a 0-3. The form was starting to slip and we made heavy weather of beating the basket cases of Monchengladbach 1-0 and beating similar drongos of Cottbus 2-1. In early November we were held to a draw at home to Schalke (it was to be our only draw at home all season). A visit to Hoffenheim ended up with 0-3 reverse and the score line was repeated at Hannover, then we were beaten at Hertha. Our away form was a worry although we were proving strong at home. We beat Dortmund and Stuttgart at home although both these opponents were suffering at the time.

The question was: would our home form be affected by the poor results away? Or would we be able to build on good home wins to start taking points again away from home?

In Europe we had made serene progresss into the group stages after beating Unirea Urzicena over 2 legs. Losing at home to Ajax set alarm bells ringing after the away defeats in the league, but away wins in Prague and Zilina were followed by an impressive win against Aston Villa at home which put HSV top of their group to qualify for the knock-out phases in the New Year

In the league we had a decent run in to the mid-season break highlighted by a win over Werder Bremen at home. By the half way point in the season we were 4^th, but only 2 points behind the leaders Hoffenheim. A long way back in 9^th were Wolfsburg: off the radar in the Championship race. At that time, nobody had them on any shortlist.

The second half of the season started off with selling Nigel De Jong to Manchester City. It was a generous price but weakened the squad even more. On the pitch we re-launched in good style as we beat Bayern 1-0 on a freezing January night. Simultaneously, Tina Turner was doing a gig in the Arena next door. But HSV were Simply The Best and went top of the league again. In our normal style we followed this with a 3-2 defeat at moribund Karlsruhe. A significant result in February was the 1-3 home defeat to Wolfsburg. At the time it was frustrating as a win would have put us top. Still, we were 2^nd and well placed and Bayern, and Hoffenheim were also labouring. What we hadn't realised was the Wolfsburg juggernaut was on the move – they were now up to 4^th and only 3 points behind us. The following week we lost at Monchengladbach by 4-1.

It was coming clear by now that the strains placed on the team were causing problems. We were still in the UEFA Cup and the DFB Pokal. The earlier rounds which had seemed such an interesting diversion as we beat Wiesbaden and had trips to Slavia Prague were being replaced by tough matches at Galatasary and Manchester City. The injuries and strains were causing players to miss league games and it was clear that our second and third string were just not up to Bundesliga games. Reinhardt and Atouba were out for the rest of the season, Guerrero and Demel were all walking wounded. The squad was at stretching point.

The high mark of the season came in the win over Manchester City at home. The score was 3-1 but the way Hamburg played was outstanding and a scoreline of 5-0 would have been no injustice. The following weekend we lost to a 90^th minute goal at Stuttgart. We slipped down to 3^rd place, overtaken by Bayern. Top of the tree was Wolfsburg, 3 points clear of Bayern and ourselves. 3 days later our boys got through in the 2^nd leg against Manchester City to set up a semi final against Bremen. The 2-legged UEFA semi final, the one-off match DFB Pokal semi final and a Bundesliga match at Weserstadion – we were to play Werder 4 times in 19 days which would define our season.

Well, by the time those 19 days were up we were out of the DFB Pokal (on penalties), out of the UEFA Cup (on away goals) and down to 6^th place in the Bundesliga (5 points behind Wolfsburg with 3 games to go). On such narrow margins is success and failure defined. Well done to Bremen but they were essentially saving their players for the Cup matches as their league placing sank to 10^th. HSVs players were interspersing their league games with tough and hard fought league matches against Berlin and Dortmund.

Now our best hope was to end the season in a Europa League placing which meant top 5. With 2 games to go we were 5^th 3 points clear of Dortmund. But in our normal style, we chose this moment to lose our unbeaten home run to lowly Koln, just as Dortmund were running up a big win over Bielefeld. We now needed to better Dortmund's result in the last round of games as we both faced weaker teams away from home. The advantage was with Dortmund who had a good momentum and had their own fate in their own hands.

As we now know, things went just right for us on that last Saturday. Monchengladbach somehow managed to hold Dortmund to a draw, while Trochowskis 90^th minute winner saw us through into 5^th place.

After 53 games the season was over. 5^th place in the league, semi finals in UEFA Cup, semi finals in DFB Pokal is overall a good balance. We had hoped and dreamed of a big party in May in front of the Rathaus. It was not to be.

Even the prize of Europa League is something of a poisoned chalice as we found out this season. Unless you have a big squad, those games can drain you of strength to fight a league campaign. If we have another run to the semi finals next season it will mean an additional 18 games – equivalent to another half season of Bundesliga football.

It didn't help that some of the better players were flogged off mid season but that is the business side of things. Ultimately every player has his price and if a multi-millionaire club offers silly money then you have to take it.

Things might have been different if De Jong and Van der Vaart had stayed, but perhaps 5^th place plus 30million euros is better than 2^nd place and no money. And maybe we would have done no better with them anyway.

So that was that. Its only 9 and a half weeks until the season kicks off again. 30^th July in the Qualifying Round of the Europa League. 3rd August is the 1^st round of the DFB Pokal again and the Bundesliga kicks off on 9^th August. Bring it on!