We keep it strictly binary this week.

0. The combined number of goals Bayern's strike duo Miroslav Klose and Luca Toni scored so far this season.

1. The number of goals former Bayern striker Lukas Podolski scored so far this season. Lukas Podolski joined Cologne in the summer, after Klose and Toni were continuously given the nod ahead of him.

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It wasn't a good weekend for exciting football. It was a good weekend for exciting numbers. Or rather, a good weekend for those who can find numbers exciting.

619. Tim Wiese has kept a clean sheet for 619 minutes and counting. Remember, he did so while playing for Werder Bremen.

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We're heading into a new season of European football, which for most people really only means Champions League football. The big question ahead of every Champions League season is of course not who wins it - Stuttgart won't, Wolfsburg won't and most probably Bayern won't either so why bother - but who earns how much.

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Foreigners play for Arsenal London or Inter Milan. Foreigners made England's footballers so bad, that they couldn't qualify for Euro 2008. Foreigners now make England's footballers so good, that they will easily qualify for the World Cup in 2010.

The Bundesliga currently employs 497 players, of which 260 players are foreigners (52,3%).

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Foreigners play for Arsenal London or Inter Milan. Foreigners made England's footballers so bad, that they couldn't qualify for Euro 2008. Foreigners now make England's footballers so good, that they will easily qualify for the World Cup in 2010.

The Bundesliga currently employs 497 players, of which 260 players are foreigners (52,3%).

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Three matchdays to go and there is still pretty much everything to play for at the top and the bottom of the table. A welcome change to last season, where we had to make do with a little tussle for the UEFA Cup and Intertoto spots and Nuremberg putting up not much of a fight to avoid the drop. This time around it could all go down to the final matchday.

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European football competitions used to be a straight forward affair. Two cups for each domestic league title and another one for the best of the rest all played out in a two-legged knockout format. Then came the G-14, breakaway league threats and UEFA's response with a complicated mix of pre-group stage qualification knockout ties, group stages and post group stage knockout ties.

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Getting the sack as a football coach isn't really the worst thing that could happen to you and to Jürgen Klinsmann. Except for the banking sector there probably isn't a job on this planet where screwing up pays you so much in golden handshakes. Looking at it this way, this season's best places in Europe to make a quick buck for just a couple of months of work and media/fan abuse are:

1.

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I never heard of Goldman Morgenstern & Partners Financial Intelligence Service before, but they published a press release which lists the turnover of each Bundesliga club for the 2007/2008 season. The data seems to come from an article in the print edition of Kicker magazine. Said article supposedly dealt with the official Bundesliga report for [. Click to continue reading...

Statistics haven't been too kind to Hertha this season. Wether you look at possession, shots on target or one-on-one situations - all the bragging rights relevant numbers usually favored Hertha's opposition once the match was over. Numbers which reinforced the believe that this team was riding it's luck and robbing others of their well deserved [. Click to continue reading...

In the light of ever more Hoffenheim table topping, coverage and hype, I thought it might be interesting to take a look at how much of their success is Dietmar Hopp's money and how much of it is Ralf Rangnick's genius. While at it, I decided to do the same for the remaining 17 Bundesliga [...] Click to continue reading...

Right in time for the biggest derby in Germany: a 25 minute documentary to help you brush up on your Schalke and Borussia Dortmund knowledge. The documentary was filmed before, during and after the infamous 2006/2007 derby, which Dortmund won 2-0 to crush Schalke's title dreams. Two seasons later emotions have cooled down a bit, [. Click to continue reading...

The new Bundesliga season is about to kick-off in a few minutes. There are the usual new teams, new coaches and new players to be excited about. There is a lot of football and a few trophies to be excited about. And finally, for the footie nerds, there are also some organisational changes to be [...] Click to continue reading...

Yesterday, VfL Bochum, as in Shinji Ono ft. Bochum, played out a friendly against the Yokohama F. Marinos which ended 1-1. At the same time Bayern Munich played against the recent Asian Champions League winners Urawa Red Diamonds and won 4-2. I don't know about Bochum's draw, but the Bayern game was quite entertaining. Click to continue reading...

Will make its' presence felt in numbers - whether it'll be on the bench or on the pitch. A total of 65 players from the Bundesliga have been included in the preliminary Euro squads of the participating countries. A cool 21 more than the Premier League with 44, followed by La Liga with 43 and [...] Click to continue reading...

Bayern Munich is the 5th most valuable football club in the world, followed by Schalke 04 in 10th, Dortmund in 15th, Hamburg in 17th and Bremen in 18th position. Don't take Forbes' data about the clubs too literally though. They will try and tell you that Schalke is owned by the Veltins brewery. (Forbes) Mad Jens [. Click to continue reading...

Bayern Munich invested roughly €80m in new players this season. The due return is yet another double, which they could have probably won without major investments, considering how the competition took turns self-destructing this year. And while Bayern's 12 point lead in the Bundesliga is impressive, the same can't really be said about their UEFA [. Click to continue reading...

According to Eurosport: Possession Werder Bremen 72,7% Rangers 27,3% Shots Werder Bremen 42 Rangers 4 Shots on Target Werder Bremen 10 Rangers 1 Corners Werder Bremen 18 Rangers 2 Accurate Passes Werder Bremen 512 Rangers 150 Well, you can't say they didn't try. Though Rangers only needed one yellow card and two saves, according to the numbers, to defend their lead. Click to continue reading...

A run of 531 minutes without conceding a goal means Jens Lehmann set up a new national team record, following Germany's 3-0 victory over Austria. A record he held anyway (530 minutes without conceding a goal between 2002 and 2005). Not bad, and to honour his achievement, here is a highlight reel of his performance [. Click to continue reading...

It's your birthday! And the Bundesliga is back. No more tiring training sessions and meaningless friendlies, but good old fashioned ninety minutes, which actually do count for something. Thus, last week was the last week of football blogging without football. It went a bit like this: Either Abby, Lulu or Dieter is/must be slowly losing track [. Click to continue reading...

The Bundesliga is still in hibernation, while all other big European leagues are already fully enjoying their second half of the season. It's a little excercise in delayed gratification I guess. Here's some numerical evidence to prove that it will at least be worth the wait. The numbers are coming from a Setanta Sports article [. Click to continue reading...

The UEFA Cup and Champions League draw just took place. The lone Bundesliga representative Schalke 04 picked up FC Porto as their next opponent in the Champions League. Porto and Sevilla were high on the wishlists of high profile second placed teams like Liverpool, Arsenal, Roma etc. So, people seem to think those two were [. Click to continue reading...

All Bundesliga clubs are organised as eingetragener Verein (eV), which Wikipedia tells me would be similar to a Non-Profit Organisation (NPO) in Britain or a Non-Profit Corporation (NPC) in the US - to give you some orientation. They often aren't pure football clubs either, but can cover a variety of sports. Click to continue reading...

A few days ago Setanta reported that Filippo Inzaghi hadn't one-upped Gerd Müller's European goalscoring record yet. In fact he was still four goals short of doing so. The article relied on data coming from Opta Sportsdata and claimed that Gerd Müller had in fact scored 66 goals in 74 matches, compared to Inzaghi's 63 [. Click to continue reading...

"It was a strange feeling, like inner peace," Inzaghi told the Gazetta dello Sport after he surpassed Gerd Müllers age old European record of 62 goals. According to Setanta though, Inzaghi will now need to score four more goals to ultimately find his inner peace. Opta Sportsdata decided to recheck Müller's goal tally and came [. Click to continue reading...

Percentage of foreign players playing for Bundesliga and Premier League clubs in the starting XI: From Season 2003/2004 to 2007/2008 Bundesliga: 61% - 53% - 51% - 49% - 54% Premier League: 47% - 45% - ??% - ??% - 66% Now, those numbers could be used for all sorts of analysis and interpretation. It's true that when the [. Click to continue reading...

A bit over one-third of the Bundesliga season is over now, and I thought it's time to cater to the statistic nerds among my readers (are there any?). I decided to take a look at how the table shaped up and how it compares to last season. In particular, I wondered whether the balance of [...] Click to continue reading...

This year's second division (2. Bundesliga) has often been dubbed as the best ever. Part of it has been marketing by the TV stations, who hold the broadcasting rights, the other bit is true. There is an undoubtedly high number of former Bundesliga mainstays trying to make it back to the top flight. To spice [...] Click to continue reading...

If you want to check out how each Bundesliga team performed during the off-season, here is all you need. All pre-season friendlies (I hope) and links to video highlights if available. Bayern Munich (5/0/3) 01.07. Bayern - FC Sao Paulo 2:1 06.07. FT Gern - Bayern 0:18 11.07. Höslwang - Bayern 0:13 11.07. Bayern - FC Schaffhausen 4:0 15.07. FC [...] Click to continue reading...

The German subdivision of Ernst & Young publishes a yearly study that takes a closer look at the financial situation of the Bundesliga. While it's Bundesliga centric, parts of the studies always consist of comparisons between the top 5 leagues in Europe (Premier League, Primera Division, Serie A, Ligue 1 and Bundesliga). The study can [...] Click to continue reading...

I've tried to compile all the jerseys of all current Bundesliga clubs, so that we can judge, whether teams that are bound to play crap and go through a disappointing season at least die in beauty - or the other way round. I consider my work to be complete, except for a few away jerseys [...] Click to continue reading...