Another week of scintillating Bundesliga action

Well, where to start this week...

Where else but at Werder Bremen vs. Hertha Berlin at the Weserstadion and the return of Claudio Pizarro. The Peruvian was electric, scoring an unstoppable second half brace as Werder ran all over their opponents from the capital. After a Kacar og (or Eigentor as they say over here) opened the scoring, the Berliners never looked like posing a threat to the boys from Bremen. The fault for the first goal must lie with 20-year-old keeper Christophe Gäng, who had one hell of a debut having been informed that he was playing mere hours before the kick off at the expense of the injured 'please drop me' Drobny. He came, he failed to connect, and he picked the ball out of the back of his net in the third minute. 1-0. There wasn't much he could do about the second though as Mesut Özil scooped a ball into Diego at the edge of the box, who controlled it on his chest with his back to goal and scored with a stunning overhead kick which looped up and over the watching Gäng. 2-0 and seemingly game over with less than quarter of an hour gone. If his confidence, and that of Hertha, didn't take a dip after that, they positively nosedived when a flighted ball from the right found Markus Rosenberg in acres of space inside the area (the logistics of which baffle me) to somehow bundle the ball home at the second attempt via the feet of the keeper and those of the defender on the line.

In the second period the man from Peru came into his own. First, a delicious angled through-ball from the brazilian Diego, who had controlled proceedings throughout, found Pizarro too eager, too hungry to get to the ball first and he easily converted low at the near post with the in-step. If that was good, his second was even better. After Cicero had claimed a consolation for the visitors just past the hour mark with a simple back-post header from a floated set-piece, Pizarro got on the end of a flowing Werder move, directed by Diego, and a cross from Frank Baumann found the big centre forward unmarked six yards out, from where he dutifully scored with a diving, glancing header into the far bottom corner. Debutant Gäng somewhat made amends for his earlier errors by denying Pizarro what would have been a memorable hat-trick, when an excellent one-handed parry kept out a beautifully executed right-foot volley by Pizarro from the edge of the box. Despite this minor setback, Pizarro is steadily climbing the goal scoring charts and though he is some way off surprise leaders' Hoffenheim's Ibisevic, who has an incredible tally of 13 goals from 11 games so far this campaign, the South-American stalwart has an impressive 7 goals to his name since his much-publicised loan move from West London.

Hoffenheim had to come from behind to claim victory over Karlsruhe yesterday, with a pair of pairs - one from Ibisevic and the other from Obasi - eventually giving the hosts a 4-1 win to go back to the Bundesliga summit. Bayern also creeped menacingly up into third place in the table after yet another scare at the Allianz arena, where there has been a quite remarkable average of 6 goals scored per game this season, against Bielefeld before a late Ribery goal and even later red card and penalty decisions allowed Munich to come out 3-1 winners. Martin Jol's Hamburg slipped to fifth following a shock 3-0 defeat at the home of Mikkael Forssell's Hannover, while Stuttgart fell into the bottom half of the table after succumbing to a 2-0 defeat at the hands of Köln. Leverkusen comfortably overcame Felix Magath's Wolfsburg in the Friday night fixture and Schalke had to wait until the 80th minute before they finally broke the resistance of Cottbus and evidently their spirit, Jefferson Farfan dispatching a late rebound from his saved penalty to rubber-stamp the result.

With colossal match-ups coming up today, Bochum and Dortmund meeting in derby action and Borussia Mönchengladbach facing Frankfurt in a crunch clash at the foot of the league, expect more drama, and in particular more goals, from this division in the upcoming days and weeks.