So the 20th match-day of the Bundesliga is over and we know who lost and who won: but do you know who’s new in your favourite team? Ideas, anyone? After all, the winter transfer rounds in January are wreaking absolute havoc with the line-ups, and so it’s not hard to understand why some people are asking questions about whether this additional round of swaps and sales after the summer signing season is a help or a hindrance. I for one am very much of the opinion that it doesn’t help at all, leading to considerable confusion within the teams – well, in teams like Schalke 04 at least.

There are some games in the Bundesliga that seem to follow all my predictions to the letter. These are the games with nothing unexpected, no surprise goals – and there were enough of them on the 16th match day this season to make me wish I’d gone to the betting shop beforehand!

For a start, the table toppers at Borussia Dortmund won 2:0 against Werder Bremen: no surprises there, then. Then Leverkusen won 4:2 against HSV, a team currently in serious crisis. Meanwhile, last year’s champions Bayern München held the upper hand against St. Pauli, newly promoted up from the second league this year. Oh really? If Germany’s record holders in terms of Bundesliga wins can’t beat newcomers to league, then I’m a monkey’s uncle.

For football fans such as myself, the weekend is clearly mapped out. Either you go to the stadium to cheer on your team, or if you can’t make it, you watch the game live on television. If you’re forced to do the latter, you make sure that you watch with fellow supporters of the same club, avoiding rival fans and people who aren’t interested in football and will talk through the game. Essentially, you try to spend the weekend cocooned away from both fans of other faiths and soccer atheists: I manage it quite well, and it’s great!

Just what was Bayern president Uli Hoeneß thinking? Or, more to the point, was he thinking at all? It’s certainly hard to believe that Hoeneß, in his time a national squad member and now former general manager of the best club in German football, had his brain in gear at all.

It’s been a week now, and football journalism has been talking about almost nothing except FC Bayern München. It all started on 29th October, when Hoeneß gave Louis van Gaal a verbal drubbing after the side’s victory on that day: he accused the Dutch coach of being “completely impervious to criticism”, of not doing enough to encourage all the members of the squad, and of not having prepared a plan in case important stars got injured.

The usual Bundesliga were rudely pushed out of top slots in sports news this week by a (not so) shocking revelation: Tour de France winner Alberto Contador has been accused of doping! Using substances intended for cattle farming by re-injecting himself with his own blood! He claims the substances must have come from contaminated meat… Yeah right! This guy is about as “innocent” as German doped cyclist Jan Ullrich.

Millions against mini-budget, record-holders against relegation candidates, favourites vs. underdogs: the contrasts s loaded up onto the game at the top of the league could not have been greater. Bayern München, a financially high-powered team who are favourites to take the title played against Mainz 05, genuine underdogs who have surprised everyone by going to the top of the table this season – and staying there.

Matthäus has been caught with another partner! What? Who? A Bulgarian! No? Oh right, you mean the Bulgarian national football team! That’s right: not many of you young ‘uns know this, but once, a long, long time ago Lothar Matthäus used to actually play world-class football. Then he joined other famous German sportsmen – like Boris Becker – in the gutter press with an unending string of cheap girls and even cheaper stories.

That’s why Matthäus never achieved his dream of managing Bayern München. After all, what Bundesliga team wants their coach’s sex-life splattered all over the pages of Germany’s notorious tabloid, Die Bild-Zeitung? And that’s why Matthäus’ only chance is in countries where people don’t read it: Serbia, Brasil, Israel, Hungary, and now Bulgaria.