On thursday we'll se whether we can advance in the DFb cup or not. Borussia Dortmund is between us and the quarter-finals, a win would at the one hand show that the team is able to work out losses and at the other hand mean that we get a lot of money ;-)
The prices for the stadium are lower, attendance is higher, even though the season tickets are not valid well over a 30 000 seats are sold. May be the first sold-out in the new stadium.

official hannover liveticker:
http://www.hannover96.de/CDA/liveticker,910,0,,de.html#

cu Squig

_________________
veni vidi vici
Gegen Rassismus
Remember Lara!

....P W D L F A Pts

X 12 6 2 4 19 14 20
Y 12 3 5 4 14 17 14

Not much difference between these X and Y records statistically - guess which is which!

......Forget the points, Borussia Dortmund has lost the same number of games. The key this early in the season is what the quality of opponents was for each team. I could look it up - but please enlighten me on here....

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Strider

Well, Hannover is the above (20 points). I don't think that statistics show too much anyways, since A it is the cup and that has it's own laws ;-) and B we were better than FCB before the game, so... ;-)

_________________
veni vidi vici
Gegen Rassismus
Remember Lara!

As I suspected most of Hannover's wins have come against bottom clubs. So their position in the top six is illusory IMHO. We saw the same thing last season in the Prem with Portsmouth, newly promoted flying high. It didnt take a rocket scientist to figure out why - the schedule had them playing the weakest teams first. Reality set in later in the rseason!

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Strider

You are right, Hannover did not win against any high-class team yet except Schalke. But winning against the bottom is enough anyways in order not to get relegated. And Mainz is suprrisingly good, but not invincible...
And Dortmund is surprisingly bad, so it is possible to beat them, we almost did so in our first game against them this season...

_________________
veni vidi vici
Gegen Rassismus
Remember Lara!

Absolutely. We never expected our club to finish the season 4th or anything. The only important thing for us are points won since the main objective of the season is still to avoid relegation. Historically, you need 40 points to do that and after 12 games we already have 20. Who we won these points against is irrelevant to us.

_________________
Konjugation eines unregelmäßigen Verbs

Ich bin fest.
Du bist eigensinnig.
Er ist ein dickköpfiger, unbelehrbarer Hornochse.
(Bertrand Russell)

Quite right - but do the math and you might see that you have to play some top teams twice before the end of the season. That'l be tough without guys like Mathis.

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Strider

Well, I am afraid you are wrong again. Out of the 12 clubs we have played so far, 6 are considered to be top clubs (even one of them might not be doing too well at the moment) - Leverkusen, Dortmund, Werder, Schalke, Wolfsburg and München. And we won twice and drew once.

When you look at the other 6 teams we have played so far, only two or three of them could really be classified as bottom teams and we won 4 games, drew once and lost once.

I really don't know what you are on about or where you get your information from. But you don't know as much about the German Bundesliga than you think you do.

I don't think Hannover would be getting as much attention and respect as they are right now if they were the team that you make them out to be. They're okay. A lot better than some other teams. Maybe not a top club, yet, but considering that Bayern München's striker Roy Makaay probably cost more than our entire team we are doing very well.

I would appreciate it if you could accept that.

Nuff said!

_________________
I'm underneath the sun
And I'm underneath the gun

Look pal, just look at the schedule - it aint rocket science. I though Germans were strong in Math! And oh, you might just want to allow for a minor detail like whether a game is home or away!

Bundesliga
Aug 7 Bayer Leverkusen 2 - 1 Hannover 96 Final score
Aug 29 Borussia Dortmund 1 - 1 Hannover 96 Final score Lower 50%
Sep 12 Hannover 96 2 - 2 SC Freiburg Final score Lower 50%
Sep 15 Hannover 96 P - P Arminia Bielefeld Postponed
Sep 18 Werder Bremen 3 - 0 Hannover 96 Final score Top
Sep 25 Hannover 96 1 - 0 Schalke 04 Final score One for you!
Sep 28 Hannover 96 0 - 1 Arminia Bielefeld Final score Lower club
Oct 2 Hansa Rostock 1 - 3 Hannover 96 Final score Bottom!
Oct 17 Hannover 96 3 - 0 VfL Wolfsburg Final score
Oct 23 Borussia M'gladbach 0 - 2 Hannover 96 Final score Bottom 50%
Oct 26 Hannover 96 3 - 1 Kaiserslautern Final score Bottom 50%
Oct 30 Hannover 96 3 - 0 VfL Bochum Final score Bottom50%

November 7, 2004German Bundesliga
OVERALL HOME AWAY
P W D L F A W D L F A W D L F A Pts GD
VfL Wolfsburg 12 8 0 4 20 18 5 0 1 14 6 3 0 3 6 12 24 2
Schalke 04 12 8 0 4 18 16 5 0 1 13 10 3 0 3 5 6 24 2
VfB Stuttgart 12 7 2 3 24 12 5 0 1 16 4 2 2 2 8 8 23 12
Bayern Munich 12 7 2 3 19 12 4 1 1 10 3 3 1 2 9 9 23 7
Werder Bremen 12 6 2 4 24 14 3 1 2 11 6 3 1 2 13 8 20 10
Hannover 96 12 6 2 4 19 14 4 1 1 12 4 2 1 3 7 10 20 5
Mainz 12 5 4 3 21 18 4 2 0 11 5 1 2 3 10 13 19 3
Bayer Leverkusen 12 5 3 4 21 18 5 1 0 18 7 0 2 4 3 11 18 3
Arminia Bielefeld 12 5 2 5 12 12 2 2 2 4 5 3 0 3 8 7 17 0
Nurnberg 12 4 4 4 22 18 2 2 2 9 5 2 2 2 13 13 16 4
Hertha Berlin 12 3 6 3 14 11 1 4 1 7 6 2 2 2 7 5 15 3
Borussia Dortmund 12 3 5 4 14 17 1 3 2 7 9 2 2 2 7 8 14 -3
Borussia M'gladbach 12 3 4 5 16 18 3 1 2 11 8 0 3 3 5 10 13 -2
Hamburg SV 12 4 1 7 16 20 3 0 3 11 10 1 1 4 5 10 13 -4
VfL Bochum 12 2 5 5 16 23 1 3 2 9 10 1 2 3 7 13 11 -7
Kaiserslautern 12 3 2 7 14 22 2 1 3 7 10 1 1 4 7 12 11 -8
SC Freiburg 12 2 4 6 11 23 1 3 2 6 7 1 1 4 5 16 10 -12
Hansa Rostock 12 2 2 8 10 25 0 0 6 4 16 2 2 2 6 9 8 -15

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Strider

Keith, I do respect your fierce loyalty to Mathis, I really do. But it is getting a bit grotesque. Clint good, Hannover bad. That sort of argumentation is just not going to cut it with us, as you can imagine.

As the press clippings prove, there has been controversy around Mathis before. That one guy wrote about his "questionable work ethic", which is exactly what we have been experiencing here. And if such things happen repeatedly, how big are the chances that the player is completely without blame?

Our coach has proven that we will integrate any player who is showing the will to help the team. It has worked for every player except Mathis and Sousa. What are the chances that the coach is still completely wrong?

Like it or not, Clint Mathis has contributed a lot to this situation. But I guess you'd rather think that the coach, the club, the media and the fans are all just too damn stupid to appreciate him.

Good thing you're not in politics.

_________________
Konjugation eines unregelmäßigen Verbs

Ich bin fest.
Du bist eigensinnig.
Er ist ein dickköpfiger, unbelehrbarer Hornochse.
(Bertrand Russell)

Well, pal, if you had done your homework properly you might have know that Dortmund, Leverkusen, Werder, Schalke, Wolfsbur and Bayern were rated top teams at the beginning of the season since they had either signed some top players or they had a lot of potential and money behind them.

It's not our fault that Dortmund didn't live up to everyone's expectations. Bremen was last year's champion, Wolfsburg and Schalke qualified for the UI- and UEFA-Cup, Leverkusen plays Champions League. So does Bayern München. So there you go...

But I am getting fed up with this discussion, really. We're a sad team with a sad coach, sad players and sad supporters, aren't we. At least that's what you've been trying to tell us for ages now. You know it all, we don't know anything. You win, we lose. Good-bye Keith! Have a good life and say hi to Clint from me.

_________________
I'm underneath the sun
And I'm underneath the gun

I am not even sure what you are trying to prove here, Keith. A win is a win, no matter who the opponent was. And when you are fighting relegation, it is imperative to win against the lower-ranked teams, because they are your main competitors.

Sure, a win against a top team is good for morale, but it will only gain you three points, the same as any other win. And there certainly is nothing wrong with our team's morale right now.

With one third of the season played, the team has exceeded our wildest expectations. So you can spin this any way you like, I cannot find fault with our results so far.

_________________
Konjugation eines unregelmäßigen Verbs

Ich bin fest.
Du bist eigensinnig.
Er ist ein dickköpfiger, unbelehrbarer Hornochse.
(Bertrand Russell)

This thread has nothing to do with Mathis at all - where has that subject been mentioned?

My comments here were just to bring a sense of reality to the teams current position. The point is that one can get carried away with stats if one does not examine and understand the underlying data. It COULD be that Hannover has turned a corner and is a great team and thus all credit SHOULD go to the new coach.
However it could be, as I have shown, that the results thus far are to a significantly great degree a reflection of an easy schedule. It would in that circumstance be foolish to think that everything was great and that the coaches decisions must be right. At mid season one can take another look at the points, but even then much depends on what opponents have been played at home and what the away schedule looks like in the second half of the season. If in the second half of the season the team has to play some of the top teams AWAY then it could get real tough and the real quality of the team will be tested. Of course in the second half of the season Hannover wont have Mathis!

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Strider