After a string of mediocre performances, Bruno Labbadia couldn’t save his job on Saturday against the almost-sure-to-win Bayern Munich, and was fired promptly thereafter. In his stead comes Markus Gisdol, he of former Hoffenheim relegation saving, midtable mediocrity and then firing. Sounds like he’ll fit in!

In all honesty, I think Markus Gisdol showed up to the job interview, had to prove he wasn’t a corpse being puppeteered by Michael Oenning, and then was given the job. I can’t imagine anyone else would want it! Personally, I can’t imagine that he’ll last more than a year. In fact, here’s my prediction: Decent upturn in results over the course of the end of the year with a bleah 12th place finish, then a slow start next season after the hype train comes through in the summer will see him fired by next November. I’ll eat a hamburger if I’m wrong (or if I’m right tbh).

The performance against Bayern was pretty spirited, but it could have easily looked a lot worse than 1:0 if Rene Adler hadn’t once again proven the world how good he can be when healthy. Certain players that we get used to as being decent enough can end up looking so overmatched against Bayern. Poor Sakai, for example, looked like a little kid playing defense against an adult against Ribery. Bobby Wood probably isn’t good enough to seriously threaten Bayern. But I digress.

Really, the Bayern game should be thrown away mentally anyway. Barring a weird miracle, they were never going to win. What they could have won were the several games preceding this one where our Burgers looked oddly flatfooted and unsure, especially when trying to protect a lead. It always looked to me that in the final 15 minutes of the game they basically just wanted to lull the opposition to sleep rather than try to, well, do anything at all proactively. I wasn’t asking for Bruno’s head before, but that does seem either tactical or motivational and it wasn’t ever going to work.

Also, for a coach that is known for his attack friendly approach and for the lineup that he was throwing out on the pitch, there was very, very little to get excited about in attack. Everyone looked tentative. Kostic seemed to only want to blow down the left and cross into the box, except nobody would be there. I’ve since heard from others that this is not how he played before. It’s also readily apparent that there’s a lot of good creators on this team now, but Bobby Wood and Pierre Michel-Lasogga or not quite at the same level. Wood is probably someone who should be weened into games at this point. Lasogga just has such limited mobility that it’s tough to get him involved in any way that’s not a header.

It seemed that Lasogga, like other HSV coaches past, may have played scared a little bit. There’s very few times – amongst all of the coaches I’ve seen over the past 5 years – where HSV has looked carefree and creative in attack. Mostly because this means taking chances with your passing / dribbling in the middle of field, where you are then open to a counterattack. Both Labaddia, and everyone else, has ended up favoring players who retain the ball well and don’t do anything too crazy over the players who are a bit more mercurial. Maybe this is why we haven’t seen much of Halilovic. Maybe I’m analyzing this completely wrong, too.

Anyway, interested to hear other people’s thoughts. Thanks for showing up to this blog still even though I barely update it!