The Hard Knock Stuttgart Life

Imagine you are back to school. You just came from an excellent year with straight As, you turned to be the teachers pet, but your classmates like you too. You were picked for all types of Model Parliaments and nationwide competitions and you were looking at prospects of Ivy League colleges because of that great year.
However, you didn't lose the ground under your feet, you knew you can't rest on it, you kept trying harder, you continued to do your homework and pay attention in class and generally, you remained quite modest. You basically did everything right.
However, suddenly everything goes wrong. You don't get any As anymore. People start to doubt you. Teachers don't take you serious anymore. Instead of Harvard, you have to look at prospects of the Southern Arkansas University and what is worst, all of a sudden your neighbour's kid, the guy you never liked and never took serious, because he was always much worse than you, joined your class and he is all of a sudden the new darling and keeps getting As.

Welcome to the world of Stuttgart, where despite doing everything right, everything went wrong for them. Stuttgart despite winning the title last season, kept on doing their homework, didn't lose the ground under their feet, kept it lowkey, made excellent signings(in theory) but somehow, nothing works for them.
The latest was a 2-0 defeat at home to Hannover, where their captain Meira got sent off after 8 minutes for a handball in the penalty box and despite trying, nothing went right for them.
There are a lot of reasons for their crisis, for some they can do little about.
First of all, they have an incredible run of bad luck with injuries, were Hitzelsberger, Delpierre, Gomez, Bastürk, Da Silva are all either injured or just come from injury. Apart of that, they have a lot of players out of form, like Meira, Khedira, Hilbert and Cacau. Also, their new signing Marica, Romania's most promising player, shows some flash once in a while, but he is not yet Gordon, as in Gordon Banks, Gordon Brown or....aeehm, Flash Gordon.
Their second problem is that their opponents take them much more serious this season. Last season, no one really thought Stuttgart are going to win it, not even with 2 rounds to go when they were top of the league. This season however, their opponents take them much more serious and the young players can't really handle the pressure. Specially, with Hitzelsberger out, they miss the boss of the young wild bunch and somehow, it just doesn't work.
However, their team is still quality and you could pick half of the German starting 11 from their players, so they should be alright once they get over this crisis. However, if they don't find a way out sooner than later, they might just finish somewhere in midtable mediocrity, which would make it difficult for them to keep this young bunch for next season.
Worse for their fans however is that local rivals Karlsruhe are the team right now, and are currently 2nd behind SuperBayern. Consisting of a team with very little Bundesliga experience and players who failed in the Bundesliga(like Christian Timm as an example, the original version of Lukas Podolski) they somehow manage to take the Bundesliga by storm, even away from home against mighty Schalke, where they won with 2-0. They also got luck, like on Saturday, where Kuranyi's goal was wrongly ruled off, however, they play really good team football and they simply work.

As you might have noticed, I have written so far very little about Iranian players. The problem is, that there's very little to write. Hashemian didn't play for Hannover, neither did Shapourzadeh for Rostock. Dejagah played for 64 minutes against Rostock, however, he didn't really impress that much and got a 3.5 from kicker. Mahdavikia came only in as a sub in the 79th minute in Frankfurt's win against Leverkusen, however due to an injury to Preuss, his teammate, he should get more playing time in the coming weeks.

Top of the table are still Bayern Munich, who just steamroll over the weaker teams of the league and profit from the inconsistency of their stronger opponents against the same teams. Behind them are Karlsruhe, Bremen and Hamburg with 18 and 17 points respectively.

Results: Bayern Munich 3-0 Nürnberg, Eintracht Frankfurt 2-1 Bayer Leverkusen, Arminia Bielefeld 0-1 Hamburg, Hertha Berlin 0-0 Cottbus, MSV Duisburg 1-3 Werder Bremen, Schalke 0-2 Karlsruhe, VfB Stuttgart 0-2 Hannover 96, Wolfsburg 1-0 Hansa Rostock, Borussia Dortmund 2-1 VfL Bochum

Table: Bayern 23, Karlsruhe 18, Bremen 17, HSV 17, Schalke 16, Hannover 16, Frankfurt 15,..., 10. Wolfsburg 12, 12. Stuttgart 10,.., 15. Rostock 9, 16. Duisburg 6, 17. Nurnberg 6, 18. Cottbus 4

Kicker grades:
Dejagah 3.5
Others not rated