FIRST TEAM
09/18/2009

1899 travel to Borussia-Park

On Saturday, 3.30 pm, 1899 Hoffenheim face Borussia Mönchengladbach in their ground, the Borussia-Park. With the exception of the long-time injured Tobias Weis and Matthias Jaissle, manager Ralf Rangnick can count on all of his players for the game to come.

"The fact that everyone's on board and fit is a positive one. We will have the exact same squad as against Bochum unless something extraordinary happens", the manager said before adding: "Marco Terrazzino offers himself in training but unfortunately, I can only choose 16 players for the squad." The 18-year old will play for the Under23 team and try to make an impact there collecting more arguments for a spot in the squad next time. As far as the starting line-up, Rangnick does not plan on making too many changes compared to last week's home victory: "The boys did a pretty good job against Bochum."

Rangnick has plenty of reason to be confident when facing ‘The Foals' on their home turf: "We go to Gladbach in order to win. On the road, we can always score and the best wins are the ones that end in 1-0." After signing Juan Arango, Thorben Marx and Raul Marcello Bobadilla over the summer, the Hoffenheim head coach reckons the new players are responsible for Gladbach's good start into the season: "This year, they play more attacking-minded which might help us. They improved their attack by signing some players and it is our task to show we did the same in the defence."

The home side will be boosted by the return of keeper Logan Bailly who was an integral part in avoiding the drop last year. The Belgian returns after having broken his toe during pre-season and is ready to get his personal season started: "In the past weeks, he took a step forward and should now be stronger than before. Logan trained very well and is fit. There is no risk in bringing him now in a Bundesliga match", Gladbach manager Frontzeck said on Thursday.

For Marvin Compper, it is a very special game in which he wants to tie on the good performances of the last weeks. Looking forward to meeting some of his old team mates at his former club, he stresses that "we need to practice what we preached. We showed what we are capable of and this level of performance has to be delivered permanently now. We want to dominate the game and show right from the beginning that we are aiming at three points." After scoring in the last game against Bochum, the defender defined five goals as his personal target and urges his team to make more use out of dead balls.

Hoffenheim lost none of the last four encounters against Gladbach and want to extend that run on Saturday afternoon.

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