Bundesliga Preview: Hannover 96 v St Pauli
Hannover will most likely claim another win today against newly promoted side St Pauli to continue their perfect start to the new season. Last season Hannover narrowly avoided relegation, but this season they have come back
stronger than ever. They are currently third in the Bundesliga, six matches into the 2010-2011 campaign.
Hannover will be extremely positive going into tonight’s match and will expect to claim all three points, especially after their unexpected 4-1 thumping of Werder Bremen, who are league leaders at the moment. They also beat
FCK away and will be brimming with confidence as they host the lowly St Pauli tonight.
Pundits have predicted relegation for St Pauli at the end of this season. However, the side has made a decent start and going into the seventh match have six points and currently lie in mid table - not too bad for a newly
promoted side.
St Pauli’s form has been somewhat surprising; the side has produced some very unexpected results. They have won when a loss was predicted and vice versa. So far they have two away wins but have only managed a single point
from their home fixtures.
Hannover have some serious injury problems and are without star Portuguese midfielder Carlitos, who has most likely been sidelined until the end of the year. If that wasn’t enough, Mario Eggimann, Leon Andreasen, Altin Lala
and Didier Ya Konan are all ruled out of tonight’s fixture because of injury.
Mikael Forssell, the former Chelsea striker, now dwells at Hannover but has not quite found his goal scoring form this season. The striker did brilliantly at Birmingham when he was there on a loan spell. However, with the
German side the striker has only seven goals in 34 appearances.
This will be the first meeting between the two sides since 2001, when they went head to head in the Bundesliga 2. Going over their recent performances and the quality of the squad, Hannover are predicted to enjoy a comfortable
win.
Possible starting lineups:
Hannover 96: Fromlowitz, Schultz, Pogatetz, Haggui, Cherundolo, Rausch, Pinto, Schmiedebach, Stoppelkamp, Abdellauoe, Forssell
St Pauli: Kessler, Oczipka, Thorandt, Zambrano, Lechner, Lehmann, Boll, Takyi, Naki, Hennings, Ebbers.
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