Happy Monday! As Covid ravages through CM9798 Towers, here’s Andrew with some good food for the soul.

Willkommen! Here we are again. Last time out the Champions League kept us off the pace at the top of the table and we can get close by winning games in hand. If you missed the last episode, you can catch up here.

What a time to be alive. David Brown makes his bow:

This great news is followed by lengthy injuries to Freddie Kluge and Harold Sporl. And, despite dominating against Leverkusen, the age-old story follows us.

We’re all salad and no burger. It’s all different in the lower echelons of Neuville which appears to be Brown’s standard.

Another layoff when we least need it puts a dampener on things. But things that aren’t damp…wwooooah there. We should be able to get through in 2^nd place on 15 points if we lose the home tie.

The great results just keep coming.

However, it’s a tough quarter final draw.

Verhaege gets his customary goal against us, but the spoils are ours against Schalke.

It leaves the table looking decent and we can still get to within 4 points of Bayern.

Kadlec gets motoring off the pitch by which point we’d already wrapped things up.

Ah the manager of the month award. Some call it a curse.

Frings gets his first call up to the National side for a serious test of his ability. Nehrbauer is added later too.

Its all routine in the Champions League against a largely grey outfit.

And despite trying to blind us with Old Spice, Cologne get sent packing.

Brown comes off injured but thankfully its only a few days. Frings gets named captain on his debut, one of the youngest players in the squad.

(It was only 2-0…forgot to grab a screen shot!). An ominous indication of where we might get in the Pokal.

A dire result of epic proportions. At times we just cannot finish a shot. With Simic now also out we take on 2^nd placed Dortmund and, just as our away game last season, we get totally hammered.

Thankfully we fill the gap with some light Champions League relief.

It’s on a tightrope for the final game against Barcelona. That said, 2^nd or 1^st we’ll probably face a difficult tie. Our poor form in front of goal continues as we fail to make our dominance count.

We just keep getting done from set-pieces. We’re also down to one ‘keeper as Enke is now also out injured. Molata (who hasn’t played) is out for 6 months with a hip injury, then this:

As if like Glockwork. FFS. Insert p*** poor result here:

We manage to break our rut before the start of the winter break.

The damage is, however, already done:

Yes, we can get back up to 3^rd but that’s no good. Bayern and Dortmund are steaming away with significantly superior squads. Has my youth policy been a bad one? Brown is doing okay, but he is lacking in consistency.

And with that, we enter the winter break and head down to the German Christmas market for a few beers to try and drink/cry our way to the next part of the season. Auf Wiedersehen!

You can follow Andrew on twitter: @KingOfTheRooks