EURO BITES: Bundesliga - Blow for Bayern, Werder Bremen’s old men shine and Seferovic decides to sit in the stands

Chris Leischwitz round-up the news from the Bundesliga as Bayern Munich suffer an injury blow and two old stages perform weekend heroics.

BAYERN BLOW AS BOATENG COULD MISS REST OF THE SEASON

Bayern Munich kicked off the second half of the season with an away win in Hamburg, however, in the aftermath, nobody spoke about the rather unspectacular 2-1 success over HSV thanks to two goals by Robert Lewandowski.

Instead it was yet another Bayern Munich injury that was the hot topic. Jerome Boateng suffered a muscle injury during the game and will be absent for about two months – although the latest rumours have it that the 27-year-old might even miss the rest of the season as well as Euro 2016 in France.

Bayern Munich currently have only two fit centre-backs, Javi Martinez and Holger Badstuber who are both injury-prone themselves. Ever since manager Pep Guardiola took office in Munich in 2013, injuries have become an abiding theme.

FRANKFURT’S MEIER SCORES A HAT-TRICK – AGAIN

For the second time this season, Frankfurt’s Alexander Meier scored three goals in one game and thus secured Eintracht’s surprise comeback win over VfL Wolfsburg.

After trailing for more than 40 minutes after Wolfsburg’s defender Dante scored the opening goal, Meier started by scoring an equaliser in the 66th minute, and the lead followed only seven minutes later.

André Schürrle scored an intermediate equaliser for Wolfsburg, but Meier completed his hat-trick three minutes into injury time.

Including Frankfurt, three of the bottom five Bundesliga teams celebrated wins at the weekend. In addition, Eintracht’s 3-2 win marked one of only two home wins this weekend.

(MOST) DORTMUND KEY PLAYERS FIT FOR MORE

The team from Dortmund proved to be the better Borussia in a well deserved 3-1 away win at Mönchengladbach Saturday night.

It was Mönchengladbachs first home loss under new manager André Schubert.

Marco Reus was the celebrated player with a goal and an assist, and with a solid overall performance.

Manager Thomas Tuchel expressed additional content in the fact players like Mats Hummels and Henrikh Mkhitaryan showed one of their best performances of the season in the first game after the winter break.

On the other hand, Bundesliga’s top scorer Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang gave a rather disappointing performance by missing several good scoring chances.

Dortmund is currently a pretty lonely second in the table, eight points ahead of Hertha BSC but trailing Bayern Munich by eight points.

TWO OLD MEN PRODUCE THE GOODS

With Schalke holding an early lead at home through Joel Matip, nothing indicated that Werder Bremen would leave with all three points in Sunday’s late Bundesliga match.

However, two of the oldest Bundesliga players turned the game around and gave Bremen an unlikely 3-1 win.

In his 300th Bundesliga match, 35-year-old Clemens Fritz scored the equaliser with his first goal in almost five years.

Bremen’s took the lead through 37-year-old Claudio Pizarro, who celebrated his third goal of the season despite being part of the starting eleven only four times so far.

Schalke, on the other hand, missed to opportunity to leapfrog Leverkusen (who drew 1-1 in Hoffenheim) and Mönchengladbach on the table and now trail arch-rival Dortmund by 14 points.

STUTTGART BACK ON TRACK THANKS TO GROßKREUTZ

Kevin Großkreutz celebrated a successful debut with VfB Stuttgart in a 3-1 come from behind win in Cologne.

Just days ago, Germany’s team manager Joachim Löw had ruled out a recall of the 27-year-old to the Mannschaft.

In his first professional Bundesliga match after almost a year - Großkreutz had been transferred to Galatasaray last summer, but then banned from playing because of administrative mistakes - he showed more than a decent performance for his new team, raising hopes for a more stable defence that Stuttgart fans are longing for.

FRANKFURT’S SEFEROVIC REFUSES THE BENCH

It is still an open question whether Haris Seferovic will be part of the Eintracht Frankfurt squad in the coming weeks – with his manager currently “completely fed up” with him.

After Armin Veh ordered the substitution of the Swiss striker at halftime (Frankfurt was trailing 1-0 to Wolfsburg at that time and later won 3-2), Seferovic decided not to sit on the bench, but rather in the stands, occasionally showing gestures towards his own management.

Seferovic is “unable to assess his own performance”, Veh said, who also spoke of an “ego-trip”. Only last November, in an TV interview Seferovic asked for more team spirit in order to play a better role within the league.