Cologne hosted Hamburg on Sunday in a match they hoped would take them out of the relegation conversation - provided they could win it.

Instead it is Hamburg who can now breathe a little easier, as the visitors won 1-0 and rose to 10^th place on 26 points.

Paolo Guerrero's 89^th minute strike was the difference in a match which provided relatively few thrills.

The Peruvian striker, put through by Mladen Petric, gave the ball a speculative flick from an acute angle on the right side of the area. Cologne defender Geromel seemed unsure whether to touch it as it passed him by, perhaps believing it wasn't bound for goal - or perhaps worried he was about to run into the post.

"We're looking to move up the table - slowly," said Hamburg coach Thorsten Fink after the match. "We're trying to get to 40 points first, and then we'll see what's possible."

Public critique

The absence of the home side’s hugely influential attacker Lukas Podolski was evident throughout. His ankle injury may keep him out for a few more games yet, but the Germany player still managed to make headlines in the lead-up to the match.

In an extensive interview with the Bild am Sonntag newspaper, Podolski complained that the promises that had helped lure him back to his boyhood club from Bayern Munich in 2009 had not been kept.

"What's missing is continuity," said Podolski. "We regularly change out our coach, our sporting director - now even our president. Clearly put, things can't go on like this."

Club CEO Claus Horstmann told the Express, another newspaper, later in the day that Podolski would likely be fined for his comments.

The club is very keen to hold on to the player, who has scored 15 goals this season, past his present contract, which runs out at the end of next season. In recent months he has attracted interest from the likes of Galatasaray, Lazio and Arsenal.

Not out

In the earlier match on Sunday, FC Augsburg and FC Nuremberg played to a scoreless draw in Augsburg. The result did little to reduce either team's relegation worries.

Augsburg went into the match three rungs lower in the table than Nuremberg, but looked livelier than the visitors from the outset. The Bundesliga neophytes dominated possession in the first half and had success attacking the Nuremberg defense, especially down the right flank. What they could not do, however, was create clear chances.

"We played a little better in the second half," said Nuremberg coach Dieter Hecking. Indeed, the Franconians had the better of play as the game came to a close, with US international Timothy Chandler and second-half substitute Alexander Esswein both going close in the final 15 minutes.

But Hecking stopped short of calling the result an underserved one.

"We're running, we're battling - what we need is to show a little more quality," he said. "A draw was the right result."

Author: Matt Hermann
Editor: Darren Mara