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Our German Bundesliga tips are revved up again on Friday afternoon, as FC Augsburg tries to take out Werder Bremen.

Augsburg is sitting in the relegation zone right now, but the truth of the matter is that just staying alive in the Bundesliga is going to be a tremendous accomplishment. This is a team that has never been in the top flight of German soccer, and it claimed its first win ever on the road at Mainz just six days ago. It was a joyous event for all Augsburg fans, but sitting at just 1-4-4 through nine fixtures, the reality is striking there are going to have to be more wins on the horizon to keep this club alive without making the immediate drop back down to 2. Bundesliga.

So far on the campaign, scoring has been the big problem for Augsburg. This team only has seven goals in nine fixtures, and in the goal-happy Bundesliga, that’s a huge issue. Only Kaiserslautern has seven goals as well, but every other team in the league has at least 11 strikes on the campaign. The good news is that the ‘D’ has only allowed 16 goals, which is fewer than the other four teams in the relegation fight right now.

And then there is Werder Bremen, a team that is still fighting for one of the spots in European competition for the 2012-13 season. Bremen is 5-1-2 on the season, but those two losses have come in back to back matches.

Last Friday, Borussia Dortmund came into the Weserstadion and walked out with a 2-0 victory in spite of the fact that many were making their Bundesliga tips on the hosts in that match. It was the first time since August 14th that the team failed to score a goal in a match, and it was the first time in three fixtures that the squad didn’t strike twice.

Still, Claudio Pizarro, Markus Rosenberg, and Marko Arnautovic, who combined have scored 12 of Bremen’s 15 goals on the season, have to be licking their chops about going against this team, even on the road. The issue is that Werder Bremen only has netted five goals in six fixtures on the road this year, and this could be a big problem if the offense doesn’t get going in a hurry.

If the hosts are going to get their first three points at home in team history in the Bundesliga, they are going to have to do so as big time underdogs. Werder Bremen is a half goal favorite at -120, and the expectations are definitely there to snare three points from this fixture. Anything less will be considered a disappointment, especially against a side that many figured would be the worst in the league this year. The ‘total’ has been set at 2.5 over -150.

Bayern Munich is absolutely destroying the rest of the competition and making for great Bundesliga tips this year, but on Friday, we are set to tackle the clash between Werder Bremen Club vs. Borussia Dortmund.

This has been a very, very strange run for Werder Bremen. The River Islanders won the Bundesliga 1 four times in their time in the top flight, most recently in 2003-04, and they have been runners up seven times, including in 2005-06 and 2007-08. However, last year, in a season which was as odd as could be in the Bundesliga, Bremen only just barely avoided the drop, staying clear in 13th place with just 41 points.

To make matters worse, lowly Heidenheimer SB knocked off Bremen 2-1 in the DFB Pokal in the first round, which leaves it with just the Bundesliga to play in this year. No cups. No European competition. Just domestic play.

So far, Bremen has made the most of this chance, posting a 5-1-2 mark through eight matches and leaving it in second place in the Bundesliga. That being said, it has been dominating at home, going 4-0-0 and outscoring teams by seven goals.

Claudio Pizarro is the leader of this team, and he already has six goals, one of the best marks in the league. Only Mario Gomez ad Klaas Jan Huntelaar have more goals with eight and seven respectively. Pizarro will be on display in this one, and he will be difficult to stop.

Don’t think that BVB09 is going to just lay down, though. No one really expected to see Dortmund win the Bundesliga last year, even relatively late in the season. However, the team posted at +45 goal differential and accounted for 75 points to win the league by seven points.

This year, Dortmund only has four wins in eight fixtures, and to make matters worse, it has three losses as well. The defending Bundesliga champs have a heck of a lot more to play for this year. They survived their first round DFB Pokal fixture with SV Sandhausen, winning 3-0 at the Hardtwaldstadion, and they are competing in the UEFA Champions League this year as well.

For a team that isn’t used to all of this activity, this could be part of the problem with its form. BVB09 has only accounted for one point in its first two matches in the UCL.

The good news is that Dortmund is coming off of a big time 4-0 win over FC Augsburg at home in the Bundesliga. The team has been split for almost two full weeks during the qualifying for Euro 2012, but so many of these stars will have played two fixtures in that timeframe.

These two teams split their fixtures last year with identical results. The home team won both matches by a 2-0 count, and there was little doubt about the hosts taking three points in either match. Of course, by the time these two teams met on May 7th in the Bundesliga, BVB09 had already become the 2010-11 Bundesliga champions.