St. Pauli eighth when their standing says eighteenth: the table has stopped listening
Seven games, eleven points and a side sitting ten places above where its standing puts it, with Achim Nietfeld's team still unbeaten at neither end of the scale.
"We are not where anyone expected us," says Achim Nietfeld, and the table agrees with him. FC St. Pauli are eighth in the Bundesliga after seven games, on eleven points, in a season that has already produced a WDLWL run. The club's standing suggests eighteenth. The standings suggest otherwise.
Nietfeld has been in charge since June 2061, long enough to have built something that does not wobble at the first bad afternoon. Four major titles sit in the cabinet, and the Hamburg Verbandspokal run of three in a row from 2003/04 to 2005/06 ended after 2005/06. That is the past. What matters now is eleven points from seven games, and a club that is spending nothing on the scale of its rivals and sitting above most of them.