Limited Time Discount! Shop NOW!
Daniel Farke’s solitary season at Borussia Monchengladbach was never more fun than the first two months. As an entire campaign, it was a big dollop of mid-table mediocrity. Eleven wins, ten draws, thirteen defeats. Meh. No back to back wins all year, but never more than two consecutive losses. Fine. Victories over each of the Bundesliga’s top three. Cool! Defeats and dropped points against each of the bottom three. Not cool. Finishing 10th wasn’t enough to stop Gladbach scratching the itch of appointing their sixth manager in eight years. Yet by the end of September Farke seemed, quietly, to be onto something.
Gladbach had lost just one of their opening five matches, and that was when reduced to ten men in a 1-0 defeat to Mainz. Only Leroy Sane’s late equaliser prevented Gladbach from winning at our old friends Bayern Munich, and given what we know about Bayern, I’m going to assume Sane scored it by cheating.
The visit of Fizzy Leipzig represented their biggest game of the season so far, and Farke’s best chance of earning the trust of his new club’s supporters. Leipzig had just appointed Marco Rose as manager — another test-tube coach reared on bull’s piss who had progressed through the Salzburg franchise’s academy to their first team, after which he was replaced by Jesse Marsch. Rose had left Salzburg for Gladbach, but angered fans by declaring midway through the 2020/21 season that he was joining Borussia Dortmund at the end of the campaign. After he announced his decision, Gladbach lost their next four league matches, costing them a place in Europe the following season, and were knocked out of the Champions League. Rose lasted only one year at Dortmund before being sacked, returning to the Red Bull franchise. Leipzig, meanwhile, were making more enemies at Gladbach by publicly courting their sporting director Max Eberl, who eventually moved to the dark side in December.
Farke’s remit was simple: beat the baddies. He shared a warm embrace with Rose as they walked out of the tunnel to the dugouts, yet the performance of his team was anything but respectful. An early chance was tipped over the bar, but that couldn’t stop Gladbach powering into the lead after only ten minutes. Jones Hofmann, one of five attackers in Leipzig’s penalty area, cracked in a rebound after reacting quicker than former Leeds target and soon-to-be £86m Man City defender Josko Gvardiol.
Leipzig tried to settle and regain composure, patiently recycling the ball following a corner, only to become the startled victims of a daylight robbery. Marcus Thuram stole the ball from a defender to spark a counter-attack, feeding Hofmann to calmly finish into the bottom corner and run away celebrating the loot.
Despite using him in the previous fixture as an emergency centre-back, Farke had moved defensive midfielder Christoph Kramer into a more advanced position closer to the forwards. Kramer is best known as the surprise starter in Germany’s victory in the 2014 World Cup final following an injury to Sami Khedira in the warm up. Kramer himself had to be replaced in the first half due to concussion, having asked the referee fourteen minutes after the initial collision whether it was the final. “I asked him when he last played this position,” Farke said after the game. “Chris said, ‘In the 2014 World Cup final,’ which I thought was a cool answer.”
If Leipzig hoped the second half would bring a change in fortunes, Gladbach patted them on the head and pinched their cheeks by scoring a third eight minutes after the restart. Ramy Bensebaini was presented with an easy chance in front of goal after a cleared set-piece was put back into the box. He could have just whacked the ball into either corner, but decided to chip the goalkeeper as if deliberately choosing the most piss-taking option.
The previous bonhomie between managers disappeared at full-time. Farke tried to offer some words of consolation, but Rose was only interested in a brisk handshake. He couldn’t leave quickly enough. It continues a theme of Farke irritating all the right wrong ‘uns. At Norwich, he had a running feud with Chris Wilder and his coaching staff, who were described as “chirpy as fuck”. A middling season with Gladbach was illuminated by shoving one up Red Bull and going unbeaten against Bayern Munich, who they also beat 3-2 at home. If only Farke had sustained that form, we wouldn’t be about to find out who he’s going to piss off at Leeds. In their next league game after beating Fizzy Leipzig, Gladbach went to Werder Bremen, and lost 5-1, but we won’t worry about that now. ⬢
£2.50
Copyright © The Square Ball Media Limited All Rights Reserved
WordPress Development By Clio Websites
