Hertha Berlin slump again and are left staring into Bundesliga void

Even the chants of “Korkut raus” – Korkut out – directed at the bench sounded apathetic. Hertha BSC are in serious trouble at the bottom of the Bundesliga and perhaps the worst of it is that hope seems to have left the stands of the cavernous Olympiastadion already.

Statistically speaking, there are still further depths to be plumbed. Saturday’s emphatic 4-1 defeat at home to Eintracht Frankfurt, Hertha’s fourth in a row in the Bundesliga, means they are still third-from-bottom and thus still not in the automatic relegation places, though Stuttgart’s rousing comeback from two goals down to beat Borussia Mönchengladbach means they are now only a single point adrift of the Berliners. Yet to describe this as a new low or to employ any associated clichés would just be a denial of the stark truth. Hertha are lost in a tangle of their own making and there doesn’t seem to be the energy to find a solution, or the fury to tear their way out, as things stand.

“Everyone here has to be pissed off enough to work their arses off for the three points,” blasted defender Marc-Oliver Kempf, who arrived just before the January transfer deadline and must feel like a kids’ party entertainer arriving midway through a food fight after the guests have each scoffed three packets of Tangfastics apiece. Coming from outside the bubble has clearly been a shock.

To say Hertha are yet to win in 2022 is factually correct, but doesn’t really provide the requisite detail of just how bad they’ve been. On Sunday morning Transfermarkt.de produced a table, much-discussed in the German media, of Hertha’s results in those last nine games, which make them the least successful team in all of Europe’s top five leagues over that period, with just two points and a