St Pauli-Ingolstadt preview

INGOLSTADT will attempt to bounce back from throwing away a two-goal lead on the opening day of the 2012/13 2. Bundesliga season as they travel to St Pauli this weekend. Both teams have made significant changes to their squads over the summer, meaning that the scouts from either club will have had their work cut out preparing dossiers for their respective team’s coaches this weekend. Only four of the players who started in St Pauli’s final game of the 2011/12 season featured in last Friday’s 0-0 draw at Aue, for instance.

It was a familiar face, though, who fired Ingolstadt into a 2-0 lead against Energie Cottbus last weekend, as club stalwart Stefan Leitl’s brace gave his side what appeared to be an insurmountable cushion going into the final ten minutes. However, Boubacar Sanogo pounced twice in the closing stages to earn a point for Cottbus, amid some questionable defending from the home side.

Advertisement

Dynamo Dresden 2-1 Bochum

The first half formations.

Bosnia and Herzegovina left-back Muhamed Subašić scored two goals on a memorable début as Dynamo Dresden defeated Bochum in a battle between two of 2. Bundesliga’s early season strugglers. However, the game was changed during the closing stages of the first half when Bochum’s Japanese winger Takashi Inui received a harsh second yellow card. His side had looked the slicker of the two teams for the majority of the opening 45 minutes, and their quality might just have seen them over the line had they kept 11 men on the pitch. But, they didn’t, and roared on by a vociferous home crowd, Dresden took full advantage, and move up from 16th to 10th in the league. Bochum, meanwhile, remain second bottom.

Match preview here.

Bochum got comfy in the opening stages, and knocked the ball about on the floor from touchline to touchline. Dresden sat off in a compact 4-4-2, not pressing too fiercely, and seemingly content to let their guests have the ball so that they could play on the counter. The home side looked stodgy and nervous when in possession, and could barely string two passes together, let alone play something good enough to splice the banks in Bochum’s off-ball 4-1-4-1.

Some individual play provided the match’s first chance, however, as Jong Tae-Se’s head-down dribble at the hosts’ defence drew a dangerously positioned free-kick in the ninth minute.