Listen, I don’t care who you want to blame, whether it’s the players, the coaches, the person putting the team together, whatever. But at the end of the day, somebody will be held accountable, and more often than not it’s the manager who gets axed. A team isn’t going to fire its entire squad, simple as that. You can make the argument that Stuttgart ALWAYS look threatening and the onus is on the players to finish the job off. I think the most telling sign that it’s not completely Babbel’s wrongdoing is that they still play hard for him. Once the team quits on its manager, that is really always the decisive end but that hasn’t been the case here so far.

But, as was pointed out in the comments section, something has to give soon, right? This schedule doesn’t get any easier, with a game this weekend home against Bayern and then away to Sevilla midweek. Let’s say worst case they crap the bed against those two teams, or even after that against Borussia Monchengladbach away, a relegation zone squad. Something has to give. They’ve lost against the good, mediocre, and bad teams in all sorts of ways.

Last thing. As far as the “bad luck” card that people are trying to play, whether it’s players or coaches or whoever, gimme a break. GOOD TEAMS MAKE THEIR OWN LUCK. Simple as that.

Stuttgart travel to play SpVgg Greuther Fürth in a sweet sixteen matchup against a long-term fixture of the 2nd Bundesliga. They are not to be underestimated, but Stuttgart did dispatch of them in the preseason.

Feel free to post here if you’re watching the match, before, during, or after.

Seriously, a win would be nice. It’s been way too damn long.

“Generally speaking, we’re not expecting to have much of a chance. The odds of us winning this one are at about 1%! Only if VfB Stuttgart have a very bad day and we have an extremely good one, do we have any chance of beating Markus Babbel’s men.”

He’s a realist I guess. They did knock off Mainz earlier in the tourney though. Either way this better be a quick affair with no drama in advancing to the next round. Not much more to report on the matter, other than that Lehmann won’t be attending due to disciplinary reasons. What better way to comfort yourself after a crap performance against Cologne than to hit up Oktoberfest? I can’t really hold it against him. He claims it was for a charity event. Hmmm.

On top of that he injured himself in training, though it doesn’t seem to be serious.

No predictions this time around. Just a win.

The idea is to extend training time and spend two, three hours on the place, without the players rushing home for lunch in-between and having to warm up twice a day.

“Effectively, we’ll have more training minutes per day”, is Veh’s reason to change the schedule.

Now, I don’t know if the new plan was used last week already, but either way, the team was, as expected, successful in the DFB Cup against Hansa Lüneburg. The VfB, playing without the injured Bastürk, Boulahrouz and Cacau, and Jan Simak, who had been red-carded in the last cup match with Carl Zeiss Jena and been banned for one match, started into the match eagerly, making it clear that losing was not an option. The quick 1:0 (Lanig, in minute 11) and the 2:0 by Hilbert, scored in the 26th minute, pointed in the right direction. However, in the first half it seemed as if Mario Gomez was in just the same shape as during the Euro: he missed a few ‘100 percent’ chances, one of which was the carbon copy of the missed chance against Austria that started the whole misery.

The second half-time started just like the first had ended, with a missed chance by Gomez (Armin Veh’s comment later: “Well, I have to admit it looked a little funny at some moments”). Every failed move was commented by the audience with cheering and ironic applause, but with two goals (58th and 79th minute) he showed that “nobody needs to worry about me”, as he said after the match. He may not be fully back to the shape of the footballer of the year 2007, but he’s on the way there.

The 5:0 (final result) then came as an own goal by Berger.

Next on the plan is the UEFA Cup qualification match against ETO Györ on Thursday. After the first Bundesliga match on Sunday, the players who have been called up for the national team squad are going to leave for the weekend.

Together with Thomas Hitzlsperger and Mario Gomez, Serdar Tasci is going to travel to Nuremberg. It’s not the first time he’s been called up, but until now he was injured every time he should have put on the DFB jersey. But now, he’s in great shape, even started training a whole week before his colleagues and is looking forward to the experience.

One player who is not going to join the team is Jens Lehmann, who now officially retired from the national team. I’m not going to get too detailed here, since Angela already wrote a piece about his decision at the world cup blog.

On a completely different note, what had been expected for months now finally happened, and Christian Gentner’s loan contract with the VfL Wolfsburg has been dissolved and he’s going to stay with the Wolves until 2010. I’ve never been happy with him leaving in the first place, but even I am forced to admit that for his career, it was the best decision, and that Stuttgart has enough midfielders to get along without him (if we aren’t struck by a flood of injuries, like last season, that is).

This means that three of Stuttgart’s strikers scored, and that with Cacau not playing due to muscular problems and Manuel Fischer missing two good chances. Seems like the striker department should not cause me as much worry as I had expected.

Especially not after I caught a video from the match that featured an interview with Mario Gomez, in which he said the following: “I never negotiated with any other club. The VfB made very clear that they wanted to keep me here and I accept that.”

On the question whether he’s already annoyed by all the fuss around him, he answers “no, that’s over, I’m here with the VfB and I’m looking forward to the new season.”

Now, even though that isn’t exactly new, it still gets more relieving every time I hear it.

The next match for the VfB should not be much of a challenge in theory. But we all know the DFB Cup has its own rules and so I hope the team treats the upcoming match on Sunday against FC Hansa Lüneburg as serious as they should. After all their trainer has been successful in that tournament before: Ralf Sievers played for Eintracht Frankfurt in 1988, when they won the Cup.

The FC plays in the Oberliga, that’s four leagues below Stuttgart. For them, it might well be the match of the year. Nevertheless, I think that it’s quite realistic to assume that the VfB will make it to the next round.

Especially since it’s the first competitive match this season that’s also going to feature Hitzlsperger, Lehmann and Gomez, who came home from their post Euro holidays too late to help out in the UI Cup match.

And with this sort-of match preview, I have to say goodbye for the weekend, since I’ll be on a short, three day holiday trip. I don’t even know if I’ll be back early enough to watch the game on Sunday. Apologies in advance, I hope that there’s going to be one point in this season where I can actually write a match report down that features my opinion based on what I saw, and not just some figures I had to copy from another page. Sorry!