Good article on HSV from the Guardian

[AlFayedsChequebook]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/blog/2010/apr/20/mcclaren-houllier-resurrect-slumping-hamburg

McClaren and Houllier in the frame to resurrect slumping Hamburg
The Bundesliga could soon witness the disconcerting spectacle of an English manager with a fake German accent

If the Hamburger Abendblatt newspaper is to be believed, the Bundesliga will soon witness the disconcerting spectacle of an English manager speaking English with a fake German accent. Or, alternatively, we had better get used to a Frenchman talking about turning corners and reaching plateaux for a few years. You've guessed it: our wonderful, almost debt-free and superduper fan-friendly league's newly found splendour is now so great that we can look to Premier League rejects to coach one of our leading teams.

Whether Steve McClaren or Gérard Houllier will really take over at the HSH Nordbank Arena, as the broadsheet speculates, is almost a moot point, however. The real story at this stage is that the Hamburg manager Bruno Labbadia will soon be shown the door after only one season in charge. Club president Bernd Hoffmann's lip service – "We want to win the Europa League with the manager, it would be our first trophy since 1987" – is half-hearted, at best. After the northerners' 1-0 defeat at home to Mainz 05 on Saturday, Bruno's position has become so uncomfortable that no hotel clerk can bring relief.

To be fair, the 44-year-old is not the sole culprit for the erstwhile title challenger's slump to seventh in the table. Hoffmann took a whole season to find a successor to sporting director Dietmar Beiersdorfer, a widely respected operator who was fired in the summer after a power struggle. Labbadia has been overwhelmed by the increased responsibility and there was simply no one to mediate in disputes between him and the president, him and the players or the vocal Hoffmann and the squad. Everyone could have done with Urs Siegenthaler starting his job in Hamburg a few months early, but the Swiss 62-year-old is exclusively contracted to the German FA as Joachim Löw's chief scout until the end of the World Cup.

Hamburg, a club that should belong to "the top 10 of Europe", according to Hoffmann, are also victims of their successful transfer dealings. Over the past few seasons, they've managed to buy cheap and sell on expensively. Süddeutsche Zeitung estimates that the club has made a surplus of €50m in the transfer market since Hoffmann took over in 2003. It probably helps if one of your best customers is Manchester City. But what's good for the balance sheet has been bad for the team's perception of itself. "Too many players here see Hamburg simply as a stepping stone for better and greater things," lamented keeper Frank Rost a few months ago. Germany defender Jerome Boateng has already jumped ship to City for next season and the list of want-away players goes on and on like a Chinese takeaway menu.

Hoffmann wants future recruits to sit a moral character exam to fight this trend but would perhaps fail himself: Labbadia is set to become the sixth manager axed by the notoriously impatient president in seven years. Giving the Bundesliga's best-coiffured coach another season isn't an option either, unfortunately. Labbadia has sadly learned little from last year's mistakes at Leverkusen, instead replicating them. A decent start to the campaign was followed by internal arguments and a near total collapse.

Labbadia, it's safe to assume, does know football. "We finally have some clear ideas of tactics again," Marcell Jansen said in praise of his new boss in the summer. But the former Kaiserslautern and Bayern striker's man-management skills leave a lot to be desired. Cack-handed attempts to act as a tough disciplinarian have seen him lose respect in the dressing room; Brazilian midfielder Zé Roberto publicly exposed the manager's lack of authority when he came back a week late from his winter holidays.

Since then, Labbadia has systematically alienated almost every player by making strange substitutions and bizarre tactical decisions. On Saturday, the crowd booed when captain David Jarolim, the last remaining supporter of Labbadia in the dressing room, was hauled off after 69 minutes for 20-year-old debutant Sören Bertram. Ruud van Nistelrooy was totally ineffective in a deeper role behind striker Marcus Berg. "Oh my god. He's a giant in the box but you really don't want to give him the ball too far away from goal," Edgar David, his former colleague in the Dutch national team, told Sportbild.

The next day, Rost resigned from his post on the players council after a public rebuke from Labbadia. The 35-year-old had taken five team-mates to watch Clash of the Titans the night before the Mainz game. They were back in the team hotel before curfew but Labbadia wasn't happy. He expected to be told of the trip in advance and didn't like the fact that Rost hadn't invited the whole team. The keeper's decision to renounce his office was then communicated via his website before he had informed his colleagues. It all adds up to the sense that everybody's doing whatever they want in the safe knowledge that Labbadia will soon be gone anyway. "No player wants to say something bad about the coach in public, but they wouldn't dream of saying something good about him either," wrote Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.

Not even winning the Europa League in HSV's own stadium on 12 May would extend Bruno's Funkyzeit on the Elbe, according to club insiders. But that won't necessarily make Fulham's task on Thursday any easier. The northerners' few decent performances in recent months have all come in Europe, where the undoubtedly talented squad seem to be much more motivated – or maybe just eager to impress prospective employers from abroad.

[Pata]

Good stuff from Honigstein there. He is excellent on the Guardian Football Weekly.