Jornada/Spieltag 2

A few takeaways, as I'll be doing for the three weekends of football with these two leagues. I've been less than thrilled, as my initial idea to write about a team from each league has gone down the drain. Part of that is the simple fact that I've been on a jacked up schedule with this job I started a few weeks ago. I won't go on about that much.

So, La Liga. Simply put, most of the games were poor. I struggle to watch the bad teams, as they all play dreadfully boring football. Take the Monday games. Until the Lamela goal, both games were set to finish 0-0. Add to that Atleti, Mallorca, and and La Real winning 1-0, plus another 0-0 with Espanyol-Villarreal. Three 1-1's as well; Betis v Cadiz, Granada v Valencia, and Barcelona's draw at San Mames, which I watched and it was a decent game. I've gotta say how disappointed I've been with a few teams. Two in particular are Betis and Villarreal. I'd say Sevilla, too, but they've got two wins from two. Atleti as well, but they won the title last season with a subpar second half and have continued the same way. But yeah, Pellegrini and Emery do the whole "tiki taka" thing but without the talent to really break teams down, nor the defensive solidity to be playing super open.

Barcelona will make the headlines, having draw against inferior opposition, but that is a pretty normal result with Athletic fans in the building. Like the Anoeta curse from a few years ago. Point is, the side from Bilbao knew how to deal with Barcelona, while La Real didn't. In terms of the Madrid game, I had work BS to deal with, so I missed that. Typical. Apparently though, instead of the attritional nature of the football under Zidane, they play exciting stuff but seem to struggle defensively. Honestly, I can't complain about that, as it makes the league watchable. Vinicius has turned a corner in front of goal, at least in the first two games, so that's good to see.

Lastly, my disappointment so far is Celta. The game against Atleti was fine, I guess, and you can't be too mad with a loss against one of the CL sides. However, the performance against Osasuna was indefensible. They got absolutely battered. This isn't just me saying it, the stats back it up. xG wise it was 2.65 to the hosts versus 0.10 for Celta. Ridiculous. Granted, as I was saying last week, the finishing by Osasuna is abysmal. They took 15 shots and still haven't scored this season. Celta took 4 shots, all outside the box. No idea what's happened to them. My guess is the imbalance in midfield. One of the forwards or "midfielders" not counting Tapia needs to be dropped. Could have more of a flat 4-4-2 with a passer alongside Tapia, Suarez out wide left with Brais wide right, and then the front two.

Now, for the Bundesliga. I watched some of the Leipzig game on Friday. My question for that one was how would each team look after the first game. Mainz is a bad matchup for Leipzig when they play that "workmanlike" midfield, but this game Marsch was smart enough to play his creators. Stuttgart, on the other hand, played a pretty bad Fuerth team and still have a bunch of starters unavailable, so a 4-0 loss shouldn't be a huge surprise. Next was Dortmund, who lost 2-1 at Freiburg. That one for me (I tweeted this before the game) was always a banana skin for the bigger side, and it proved to be just that. The stats were intriguing, to me at least. 3/4 of the ball was Dortmund's, but the xG was just about even. This more or less means Dortmund couldn't get the final ball going, pretty much all game. Especially with the Grifo goal coming from a low probability free kick. People will crap on Reyna because he's American, but I thought he was one of the better Dortmund players. I thought Schulz was horrible, and he was hooked before HT. Passlack was average at best on the other side. Malen was bad, and I don't like him out wide, which is kinda where he ended up. There's just something dysfunctional about the diamond with that set of players. It lacks someone to win the ball back. Dahoud isn't that. Bellingham is a bit rash and performs better higher up the pitch. Reyna and Reus operate in the same general areas.

One game I didn't watch was Leverkusen and their 4-0 destruction of Gladbach. I have it recorded and will get to it at some point. xG wise, it was a close game; 2.20 to 1.73. According to Fotmob, all the goals were below 0.10 xG, while Gladbach didn't score any of their chances of similar quality. Also, one was an own goal, so that plays into it as well. One of those where everything goes right for one team and wrong for the other.

Lastly, I'll give my take on Bayern 3-2 Koeln. Again, I didn't watch the whole game, so my grasp of what happened is shaped by the parts I saw, which was basically the first 20 minutes of the second half (on replay), and the last 15 live. Apparently it was a back three for Bayern. Sane was playing right wing back, which is a position you can't expect him to thrive in, to put it bluntly. Stanisic (Nianzou) and Musiala (Sane) came on at HT, shifting back to a 4-2-3-1, and Bayern scored in the 50th and 59th minutes through Lewandowski and Gnabry. However, the visitors struck back a minute later with a Modeste header, followed by a decent finish from Mark Uth 2 minutes later. Gnabry scored again 10 minutes on, and it finished 3-2. Personally, as a guy who favors Koeln, it's a joy to see the team actually playing football now with a proper coach. That's my takeaway for them. After the calamity that was last season, barely staying up via the playoff, to get a win against Hertha and nearly get something at Bayern is a dream start. For Bayern, it's a work in progress. They don't have much depth, really, and RB is a position of weakness. Reminds me of Liverpool, except without billionaire owners.