Peeking over at Phil’s last game preview vs. Kaiserslautern, it looks like I just copied everything. I promise, it was not intentional. Since the opening 1-0 loss to Mönchengladbach, Bayern have yet to concede a goal, while striking 9 times in the Bundesliga. In the meantime, Freiburg have stumbled out of the gate this season, allowing a draw with lowly Augsburg, and losing to Mainz and Werder Bremen in consecutive weeks before finally picking up their first win against VfL Wolfsburg.
It looks like Jupp Heynckes will go with a 4-2-3-1 lineup consisting of:
Neuer
Rafinha, van Buyten, Badstuber, Lahm
Gustavo, Schweinsteiger
Muller, Kroos, Ribery
Gomez
Freiburg will most likely set up with:
Baumann
Mujdza, Barth, Krmas, Bastians
Schuster, Caligiuri, Flum, Makiadi, Reisinger
Cisse
Mujdza will be a game time decision, depending on his recovery from a knee injury.
Things to watch for:
- Over and over again in their first four games, I saw extremely shoddy defending in the box for SC Freiburg. If I counted correctly, six of the nine goals they conceded were off of crosses into the box. Many of which resulted in clear headers. Bayern must exploit this, as it is a glaring weakness.
- They are also susceptible to quick counter attacks, but I don’t expect to see many opportunities for this on Saturday, as many teams are cautious about opening up that much on an attack.
- On the attacking side, Freiburg has the Bundesliga’s second leading scorer in Papiss Cisse. In the first four games of the season, the forward from Senegal has tallied four goals. He has good speed and vision on the pitch, as well control of the ball when he receives crosses in the box. It is vital for the Bayern defenders to be extremely vigilant of his movement in the box. He has made a number of excellent cuts to the goal so far this season.
- Watch out for Makiadi as well. The midfielder has netted twice this season and has shown excellent skill on both of the goals.
Injury reports: As mentioned earlier, both Mario Gomez and Daniel Van Buyten are set to return from their injuries on Saturday. Robben will sit out again, with the hope that his groin and back injuries will completely healed in time for the Champions League match at Villareal on Wednesday.
Final Notes:
- Freiburg have lost their last 11 games against Bayern Munich. I don’t see that streak ending tomorrow.
- The match will be shown on ESPN3. If you don’t have access to that, post a message on the game thread, and I’ll get you a link to the game.
- I've missed this.
"AHHHHH!! You scored a goal! I freaking love goals!!"
Thanks for reading and for the support!
-Peter