At the international break, Hamburger SV are sitting in 12th in the Bundesliga on 31 points after 27 games.
The more alarming sign is that the club has taken just nine points from its last 10 games; only Cologne (nine), Augsburg (eight) and Hannover (three) have fewer in the Rückrunde.
For the entire season, HSV boast just 31 goals in 27 games and attacking midfielder Nicolai Müller, who saw a grand total of 13 minutes as a substitute in the club’s first three games, is their leading scorer with seven goals.
That is just one of the five problems that we are going to discuss in this article.
Offense
Head coach Bruno Labbadia has gone through a bevy of unsuccessful options.
Pierre-Michel Lasogga, a former Germany under-21 international, who had a breakout year with 13 goals at an average of 3.5 shots per game in 2013-14, appears to be repeating his miserable 2014-15 season (four goals in 1,860 minutes and just 2.5 shots per game) this year. The 24-year-old is averaging just two shots per game and has not scored since 20 November, as all six of his goals came in the Hinrunde. Since 1 February, Lasogga has not made any starts and has given way to the 28-year-old Latvian forward, Artjoms Rudnevs, who had made zero appearances in the Hinrunde despite no significant injuries.
With just two goals in 579 minutes, the current Labbadia favourite’s most meaningful contribution has probably come off the field in a bizarre domestic incident, where the words ‘wife’, ‘tongue’, ‘biting off’ and ‘on the street’ were involved.
That leads us to HSV’s third option in Josip Drmic, one of the worst forwards of the Hinrunde for Gladbach, whose €1.2 million winter break loan move has resulted in one goal in 420 minutes before going down for the season with a knee injury.
Last but not least, in their recent friendly against Holstein Kiel, Labbadia experimented with a duo of Lasogga and Sven Schipplock, with the latter bagging a brace. Schipplock, who came over from Hoffenheim for €2.5 million in the summer, is goalless in 15 Bundesliga appearances and 606 minutes. More importantly, in terms of shooting accuracy, out of the 54 strikers eligible, only the one and only ‘Lord Bendtner’ – who was just released by Wolfsburg – is worse than Lasogga and Schipplock.
OUCH!
That is 3,300 minutes of forward play producing nine goals in total. Goals from counter-attacks (three) or set pieces (six) are not even helping out this weak offense, which actually has benefitted from three penalties and three own goals.
So, the offense looks pedestrian, but is the team really that bad?
Hamburg 14-15 – a Houdini job
It is easy to forget now, but HSV were dead last in the Bundesliga just 11 months ago on 24 April 2015 with 25 points from 29 games. Their number of total goals?
Sixteen!
Labbadia, who previously lasted a season in 2009-10, was tapped as savior for a franchise that was reaching Kardashian level disfunctionality. This excellent article by the walking Bundesliga encyclopedia Nik Wildhagen does a great job of laying it all out. Miraculously, Labbadia’s team scored nine goals and won three of its last five games to finish 16th, still in a relegation spot. The play-off win against Karlsruhe was nothing short of dramatic – a goal by Müller and Rene Adler saving a penalty in extra time meant that die Rothosen remains the only club never to have been relegated since the Bundesliga started in 1963.
The defense gave up 50 goals in 2014-15 – a 25-goal improvement over the 75 they conceded the year before, and with 38 in 27 games, Hamburg are on pace to improve to just 48. They are also allowing almost a shot per game fewer this season, making 21 clearances per match instead of 30 last year, and allowing 10.5 dribbles past their defenders compared to 13 last year; both signs of meaninful improvement.
Cléber has been a big part of it, as he is once again in the top five with over 10 defensive actions per game after leading the league last season.
Ineffective transfers
After two consecutive escape jobs, one would believe that it would behoove Hamburg’s management to make some significant upgrades in terms of transfers to avoid another relegation battle. The club has tried, spending close to €20 million on revamping the midfield with Lewis Holtby, Albin Ekdal, Aaron Hunt, Michael Gregoritsch – three names with big league experience in their mid-20s, plus a promising 21-year-old from Bochum.
That quartet has played 5,714 minutes and has produced six goals from 96 shots (a 6% conversion rate), 86 key passes and four assists for 90 total chances created. In comparison, Stuttgart’s fearsome foursome of Daniel Didavi, Filip Kostic, Serey Die and Lukas Rupp has scored 20 goals, with 13 assists and 163 chances created, while Schalke’s young quartet of Johannes Geis, Leon Goretzka, Max Meyer and Leroy Sane are at 13, 16 and 150 respectively.
Skeptics would point out that those are unrealistic comparisons, but if we take two of the Bundesliga’s newcomers in Ingolstadt – Pascal Groß, Roger, Alfredo Morales and Max Christiansen sit on two goals, seven assists and 103 chances created and Darmstadt – Jerome Gondorf, Peter Niemeyer, Jan Rosenthal and Marcel Heller have collected seven goals, seven assists and 67 chances – we are right there.
But that is just not good enough for a team with Hamburg’s budget (spending the 12th most in the league on wages) and pedigree. The two caveats here are that: a) injuries have limited Ekdal and Gregoritsch to around 1,000 minutes each and they are likely to improve next season provided they can stay healthy; and b) Holtby was played out of position early in the season in an attacking role, where Aaron Hunt has since taken over and been among the more creative players as he is on par with Arturo Vidal, Henrikh Mkhitaryan and Marco Reus with 2.12 key passes per 90 minutes.
Advanced stats actually show improvement this year
You do not need advanced maths skills to tell you that 31 is more than the 25 goals Hamburg managed all of last year, with Lasogga and the artist formerly known as Rafael Van der Vaart joint top scorers at four goals apiece.
In the 2015-16 season, HSV are enjoying more possession by 2%, a higher pass completion rate by 3% and more shots – 0.9 more per game and 0.7 more shots on target. Shots from open play are also up – 7.6 this season compared to 6.6 last.
The breakdown on their total shots per game is as follows: 2015/16: 11.6 – total – 5.1 off target – four on target and 2.6 blocked, while the 2014-15 distribution is: 10.8 – 5.2 – 3.3 – 2.2 – meaning that the team has actually improved its accuracy. This is despite taking 0.6 shots more per game from outside of the box (five to 4.4) than last year.
Replacing the combined 99-year-old trio of Valon Behrami, Ivica Olic, Van der Vaart with Holtby, Gregoritsch and Hunt (average age of 25) has helped, though not necessarily in the goals department, where both troikas produced six.
**Statistics sourced from Whoscored.com and Footballintheclouds
Internal incidents and poor management
We have already mentioned the Rudnevs incident, but there was also a strange training ground scuffle in February between Michael Gregoritsch and Ivo Ilicevic. The 29-year-old took exception to a challenge by the Austrian and promptly head-butted him. Ilicevic was suspended for the match against Cologne and is set to leave HSV in the summer, with Werder and Frankfurt among the candidates to sign him.
The sale of young stars – as explained by this article – is absolutely staggering, and when you combine that with the instability of the managerial position – 14 (15 if you count Labbadia’s two stints) managers since Thomas Doll was let go in February of 2007 and five since February of 2014.
As far as solutions go, there are no quick fixes, and while Wildhagen is correct that it could take a couple of transfer windows to sort it all out, some counterpoints should be offered.
Coaches like Martin Schmidt, Ralph Hasenhüttl or Pál Dárdai have all proved that it is possible to get a lot out of sides with limited capabilities and that HSV management would be wise to take a hard look at Labbadia’s future, unless they want to keep battling against relegation.
Bringing in a quality attacking player should be the number one priority this summer and raiding Frankfurt in the form of Alex Meier – who had been stunning before his unfortunate injury – and Marc Stendera – a superb 20-year-old centre-midfielder linked with Dortmund, would be a nice start.
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