Gladbach’s late rally could earn Polanski chance to save their season | Bundesliga

A week is a long time in the Bundesliga but, for Bayer Leverkusen and Borussia Mönchengladbach, if Sunday afternoon is anything to go by, this season promises to contain the lessons of several regular years. For Leverkusen, having had such an invigorating liftoff on Kasper Hjulmand’s debut with a win over Eintracht Frankfurt, it was a reminder of how much work there is still to do. But for Gladbach, it was confirmation that yes, there is at last the first shard of light at the end of the tunnel.

Last weekend Gladbach – five times Bundesliga winners, not to mention double Uefa Cup champions in the glory years of the 1970s – were humiliated at home by Werder Bremen, beaten 4-0 and getting off lightly, with Werder’s own 3-0 home loss to Freiburg on Saturday underlining just what a bad defeat that was. After the firing of the former Leverkusen boss Gerardo Seoane and the trip to face the 2024 champions, the Monday morning mood could not be more different.

On paper not that much has changed. Gladbach remain winless (over 11 matches in total going back to last season) and are still second-bottom of the table, kept off the floor only by pointless Heidenheim.

Yet Haris Tabakovic’s goal potentially changes everything for the team and their interim coach, Eugen Polanski. After an enterprising performance, in stark contrast to what had gone before, the visitors were nevertheless heading for a narrow defeat when two of Polanski’s substitutes combined. In the second minute of second-half stoppage time the teenage debutant Charles Herrmann drilled in an inviting corner and Tabakovic rose in the six-yard box to glance a header past Mark Flekken. The pair and a host of teammates celebrated with abandon in front of the travelling fans in the south-west corner’s guest block.

No wonder. It was Gladbach’s first goal of the season, two-and-a-half minutes off four matches in, and from an unlikely source. Three years ago, Tabakovic was playing in the Austrian second tier. Before Sunday, Herrmann hadn’t played a single minute of Bundesliga football. Now, they have combined to kickstart a season and maybe even an era. If the equaliser was unlikely, it was far from undeserved.

Polanski could not have dreamed of such a declaration of candidature. His side were energetic throughout, a million miles from the shambles dragged all around Borussia-Park by Bremen a week before. “I told the team to trust themselves,” Polanski said. “The boys stuck to the game plan and, in the end, the equaliser was absolutely deserved. We want to be active, aggressive and play good football, and I think we showed that for long stretches.” Gladbach even thought they had taken the lead in the first half when Jens Castrop smashed in a magnificent finish, only for VAR to confirm he was marginally offside. “In the Regionalliga,” lamented Polanski, promoted from the club’s under-23s, “it would have counted.”

How long he will have to endure football with VAR remains to be seen, with Urs Fischer and Edin Terzic sounded out for the permanent job. This, however, was a great start, and one could imagine Roland Virkus, Gladbach’s sporting director, and the board talking themselves into keeping Polanski in place. While talent has drained from The foals’s squad at an alarming rate recently, Seoane’s departure means Gladbach have fired a coach in three of the last four years, with Adi Hütter and Daniel Farke both on their way after a single season in charge, underlining not only a lack of continuity and stability but a considerable financial burden on the club.

Polanski offers something else, with the business case and sporting case coinciding. Herrmann’s decisive cameo was symbolic in terms of him being promoted after working with Polanski, who has also been coaching the team’s former golden boy Florian Neuhaus(the No 10 was dropped from the senior squad after being caught rubbishing Virkus in a video taken by a supporter). Rehabilitating Neuhaus, who entered as a substitute in the second half after being encouraged and instructed at length by Polanski, would be a huge boost on and off the pitch. Gladbach simply don’t have the money to buy someone of the quality of Neuhaus at his best.

Talent is not the issue for Hjulmand and Leverkusen, but time is. There were enough moments in which they showed they can affect big games this season – Malik Tillman’s smart finish to open the scoring, Eliesse Ben Seghir’s jinks infield drawing defenders, Ernest Poku’s bright cameo – but they looked what they are: virtual strangers. Only four of Sunday’s starters were at the club last season. After the international break Hjulmand had two days of training before facing Frankfurt, though he has since returned to Denmark to face Copenhagen in the Champions League. “We don’t have much time on the training ground to practice new things,” he said, “or plan B or C. We obviously work as much as possible on the pitch but not too much, because it’s very important that we try to keep it simple and then grow from there.”

Polanski has more time, but more convincing to do. Gladbach are not ready to rival Leverkusen yet, but don’t have to look too far into their rivals’ past to know that stability has a lot to recommend it.

Talking points

• Who needs a plan when you’ve got Harry Kane? Bayern Munich came under pressure at an in-form Hoffenheim in the first half but raced into a 3-0 lead thanks to the England captain’s ninth hat-trick for the club, leaving him two short of a Bayern century before Friday’s home game against Bremen. If he were to do the necessary Kane would beat Cristiano Ronaldo’s and Erling Haaland’s joint record for reaching 100 goals fastest for a club in a top-five European league (105 games; Kane has played 103).

• Consistency isn’t Karim Adeyemi’s middle name, but it might be if he got to play Wolfsburg every week. His fine first-half strike was his sixth in seven games against The wolves and won the game for Borussia Dortmund. Having looked shambolic in conceding a two-goal lead late on at St Pauli on the season’s opening day, BVB have not let in a league goal since.

• Kane wasn’t the Bundesliga’s only British hat-trick hero this weekend, with Oliver Burke’s sublime treble helping his new club, Union Berlin, to an unexpected win at Eintracht Frankfurt, weary from their midweek thrashing of Galatasaray but with enough in the tank to threaten a comeback from 4-1 down (Union eventually triumphed 4-3). “He’s slowly settling in Berlin and kept his composure,” said Steffen Baumgart, Union’s coach, who did the opposite, as he was later sent off for kicking a ball of paper on to the pitch and is under investigation for allegedly giving a middle finger to a match official.

• Finally Hamburg are up and running, with Luka Vuskovic, the teenage Spurs loanee, scoring the opener in the win against Heidenheim despite breaking two fingers beforehand. “I was so annoyed,” he said of missing an earlier chance, “that I hit the post with full force.” Fábio Vieira, on loan from Arsenal, created the eventual winner for Rayan Philippe.