VfL Bochum - 1.FC Köln

Important match ahead as both need the win, home side against relegation and Cologne for promotion. Also it looks like that Cologne wants revenge for last season because Bochum won this game 2-1 and put Cologne out of the promotion race with this win. It was a much different situation last season as Bochum was on fire with three wins in a row while Cologne suffered a bit. This time Cologne is on fire and Bochum has some problems again. Despite this Coach Neururer wants to hurt Cologne again and hope that he can be the first with his team who can beat this team from Cologne.

Hard times are behind Bochum and it was not all well and the downtrend was stopped last weekend with the 1-0 win to Cottbus. It was an important win after running six matches winless and all hope that they made the turn around now. Of course this can give a lot of motivation and self confidence back and this is needed as well against the top team here. Under the week some players faced slight injuries and they could not train but both Tasaka and Freier return at the end of the week into team training and they are available for the game today. All in all it speaks a lot for the same starting lineup who did very well with the win in Cottbus. The squad is almost the same as last weekend, only Chaftar got injured in training this week and is out with muscle injury. His place gets Felix Bastians who is in the squad after a long time, last was at Round 1. Comeback for him and he hopes for better times now.

On Colognes side all is well and all are very happy with the situation. Ok, if you stand on top it is all good but with such a good and well balanced squad this is almost a must here. Coach Stöger provided not an insight which team he wants to field today. He has a lot to choose anyway and therefore he wants to hold the concentration from the players high. But all in all it is more expected that the same starting lineup from last win against Union Berlin starts. What should he change after the best season performance last monday? He uses again a 4-2-3-1 system with the lone striker Helmes while his former partner Ujah is again on bench. With this formation they did very well in the past matches and it worked anyway. All offensive players like Risse, Halfar and Peszko are very flexible and they change the position often what is very difficult for their opponent to defend them. Also in central midfield with Lehmann and Gerhardt it is much more stability in defensive and the result gave them the good feeling that they are very hard to crack as they allowed only 5 goals against them. This is the top number of 2.Bundesliga, all the others have already double digit. Therefore it is not possible to get back to the early produced 4-4-2 with two strikers. The team feels better with 4-2-3-1 at the moment and because the result are on their side, why change.