This weekend Hertha travel to Monchengladbach to face "the foals" and in doing so up to six of Hertha's players could find themselves returning to their former club. Marcel Ndjeng ,Tolga Cigerci, Johannes van den Bergh, Peer Kluge and Alexander Baumjohann are all former Gladbach players.
Also in this game both managers are facing their former clubs. Lucien Favre hosts Hertha whilst Jos Luhukay returns to Monchengladbach where he was the coach at until 2008 when he was sacked with just a 38% win rate. He returns this weekend with his team from the capital with a significantly better 53%.
With just two places and three points between these two teams who knows what will happen to Jos' statistics when the time comes on Saturday evening. You could easily argue this is going to be the game of the weekend / Spieltag 26!
Hertha have had a mixed bag of success in Mönchengladbach over the years. In the last ten matches there they have lost three, drawn four but won three as well. This all adds to the match being on a knife edge and it all hangs on who turns up on the day. The scene is set for a great encounter this weekend.
| After the match Well, what promised to be a close encounter ended up being anything but. In practice it was all over after the 32nd minute after two goals in four minutes. The second of which appears now to have been attributed to Max Kruse looked like it came off the top of Adrian Ramos' head to me. Raffael, one time Hertha player and Ronny's brother sealed our fate in the 40th. In the first half Gladbach had four shots and scored with three of them. That is pretty clinical, even I would have to admit. . |  thanks to FourFourTwo via a third party tweet |
Hertha never really recovered and the midfield in particular just didn't have appear to have any ideas. There was only one real chance for Hertha, early in the first half when Anis Ben-Hatira was left in space with just the keeper to beat and he shot it wide. Another case of Hertha not taking their chances. Gladbach had 58% of the possession but the key thing was they had four shots on goal and scored from three of them. Hertha had just two shots goal and didn't score at all. What is perhaps worse that later in the second half Hertha had the ball and were passing it around but not driving forward. They couldn't find any answers and no way through. To make things worse, as if you needed to, in the 63rd minute Sebastian Langkamp picked up a fifth yellow card so he will miss the next match (against Bayern).
Recent results must have affected the guy's confidence and so the way they play. Jos Luhukay has his work cut out to lift the team and get them back in the fight. I really hope Jos can work some special magic in the next few days! Next stop Bayern comes to town . . .
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