Having ended the first part of the campaign with three successive defeats, Hamburg will be desperate to achieve a victory when they host Schalke on Sunday.

The Miners are also in search of three points as they hope to close the gap behind their top 4 rivals, which should make for an interesting encounter at Imtech Arena.

The seven-time Bundesliga winners have been struggling to return to old glory days, although they did show some promise last season.

However, after narrowly missing out on European qualification, the Red Shorts experienced all sorts of problems in the new campaign, and even slipped to the danger zone.

Successive defeats to Augsburg, Bayern Munich and Mainz saw Bert van Marwijk’s side end the first part of the season just two points clear of the bottom three.

But with the team showing some promise in warm-up games, they are priced at 2.88 (17/9) to return to winning ways against Schalke.

Boss Bert van Marwijk has too many problems to count at the moment, with Adler, Djourou, Arslan, Demirbay, Rincon and Beister all unavailable.

Marcel Jansel is doubtful with a bout of flu, whereas Lasse Sobiech is ready to deputize for Heiko Westermann if the Germany international fails to recover in time.

Probable starting line-up (4-2-3-1): Drobny – Diekmeier, Tah, Westermann, Jansen – Badelj, Jiracek – Ilicevic, van der Vaart, Calhanoglu – Lasogga.

Unlike their next opponents, Schalke have been on a major uptrend of late, having finished last two seasons in top 4.

The Miners recovered well from the poor start of the current campaign as they climbed to the Champions League positions, but several under-par performances saw them slip to seventh.

Schalke currently sit four points behind the final Champions League berth and they have a good chance to further close that gap with Borussia M’Gladbach losing to Bayern on Friday.

And with Hamburg not exactly firing on all cylinders at the moment, there may be some value in odds of 2.50 (3/2) offered on away win.

Jens Keller has worries of his own as Dennis Aogo, Jan Kirchhoff, Julian Draxler, Marco Hoger and Christian Clemens all miss out through injury.

Meanwhile, Benedikt Howedes should return to the starting line-up, whereas Klaas Jan Huntelaar could make his first appearance since August.

Probable starting line-up (4-2-3-1): Fahrmann – Uchida, Howedes, Matip, Kolasinac – Neustadter, Boateng – Farfan, Meyer, Fuchs – Szalai.