Kaiserslautern escaped the danger zone with an away win over under strength Schalke side and Die Roten Teufel now have a great chance to ensure their Bundesliga survival. St Pauli, on the other hand, are tied to the bottom of the standings after picking up just one point from last nine league games and they will have to show a massive improvement in order to get something from this match.

Kaiserslautern impressed on the travels

Following back to back victories over Koln and Bayern Munich at the start of the league campaign, Kaiserslautern embarked on a poor run of results, which saw them pick up just one point from next six games, but the team then stabilized their form and started climbing the Bundesliga table. Marco Kurz’s men have shown a lot of improvement of late, while boosting their survival chances with the run of four wins in last six games. The interesting thing is that Die Roten Teufel have lost both games at home, to Bayer Leverkusen and Nurnberg, but they should, nonetheless, have no problems against sorry St Pauli. The players are brimming with confidence after beating Schalke at Veltins Arena and they are aware another victory would mean they get to keep their Bundesliga status. The hosts have got a couple of important missings, but coach Marco Kurz will still be able to field a very strong side.

Florian Dick has picked up a thigh injury and he is set to miss out, whereas Ivo Ilicevic and Adam Nemec are not yet ready to return.

Hopeless, hapless and on road to second division

St Pauli currently sit just three points behind the relegation play-off place and five points adrift of safety, but nobody believes the team can escape the drop and there are a couple of reasons for that. The first one is that the players have completely lost the confidence following the run of eight defeats in nine games, while the other involves the absence of key players. St Pauli had the misfortune to have several key players out of the squad in the crucial part of the season and that can be considered the main reason behind the major downtrend in form. With those players still not ready to return, team’s dismal results look likely to continue. St Pauli did bring one point from their last away games, but they definitely face an uphill task against high-flying Kaiserslautern.

Carsten Rothenbach, Carlos Zambrano, Moritz Volz, Fabian Boll, Thomas Kessler and Bastian Oczipka are all unavailable, which means the visitors will be without the starting keeper, the entire back line and an important midfielder.

Verdict

Kaiserslautern have been in pretty good form lately and they should have no problems beating utterly disappointing St Pauli. The visitors are missing more than half of the usual starting line-up and everything suggests their dismal run of results is set to continue.

Our prediction: Home win

Odds: 1.91 (10/11)

Bookmaker: William Hill