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One of the eternal mysteries of football is how a group of players with certain objectively measurable abilities can perform like world-beaters one week and total clowns the next. Borussia Mönchengladbach are currently presenting a particularly extreme version of that conundrum.

How big is the Foals' turnaround? Ponder the following.

In the first 22 rounds of last season, Gladbach conceded an outlandish 56 goals. In 15 league matches since then, they've let in only 11.

Along the way, they beat each of the three past German champions, prevailed in a nerve-racking relegation playoff by a single goal, and have now ended up at the top of the Bundesliga standings for the first time since the opening round of the 1998-99 season.

There are a number of reasons one could cite for Gladbach's back-from-the-dead act. For instance, better luck avoiding injuries, which forced the Foals to play with differing versions of their back four. Or the emergence of young goalkeeper Marc-Andre ter Stegen and fullback Tony Jantschke as big-league players.

But no individual factors suffice to explain a renaissance of this magnitude. Instead, it's a lot of little improvements made simultaneously, and mutually reinforcing one another, that have turned Gladbach from laughing stocks into league leaders.

Sudden salvation

If it's hard to pinpoint the causes of Gladbach's recovery, it's easy to date when it began: February 14, 2011. That was the day Swiss coach Lucien Favre took over the team.

Favre was known as a tactician, with little time for star egos, but there was no Valentine's Day massacre at Borussia Park. Favre's contract was valid for both the first and second divisions, and almost everyone at the time - including mostly likely the coach himself - assumed that the latter would be the case.

The pressure was off, and that, it seems, may have been an advantage. With the immediate aim being to stabilize the team and avoid embarrassing blow-outs, Favre concentrated on fundamentals like tracking back and spacing.

The result was that the Foals stayed in all their remaining matches, giving themselves a chance to win. And they managed to pull off a couple of unlikely upsets - most notably, of rampaging champions-to-be Dortmund. Those three points turned out to be the margin between the relegation playoff and going straight down.

Statistically speaking, Gladbach's offense didn't improve hugely. After scoring 32 goals in 22 matches, the Foals only netted a further 16 in their last 12.

But they no longer needed three goals per outing to win games, and attacking players’ helping out in their own half was a key reason Gladbach’s defense shaped up so quickly.

New lease on life

Favre is a notorious perfectionist, but after this weekend's convincing 4-1 win over Wolfsburg, even he had trouble restraining his enthusiasm.

“Today we earned the fans' applause,” the Swiss told reporters after the match. “We were clearly the better team and could have won by more.”

Freed from the pressure of last season's relegation fight and integrated into a stable system, an offensive trio whom many people had already written off are coming into their own.

South Americans Juan Arango, Raul Bobadilla and Igor de Camargo (a naturalized Belgian) never quite lived up to their substantial transfer fees in the preceding two seasons, and took much of the blame for the Foals' flailing in 2010-11. Discipline was a particular problem, with all three picking up straight red cards in the first half of last season.

But the trio have played an important - and better behaved - role in Gladbach's hot start to this campaign. De Camargo scored the lone goal in the Foals' opening day shock upset of Bayern in Munich, and the much-maligned Bobadilla, sent out on loan in January, provided a goal and an assist in their win over Wolfsburg.

“He surprised everyone today, myself included,” Favre said.

The improved form of the “ABC” forwards, plus the emergence of Marco Reus as a stand-out midfielder, have put smiles back on the faces of the once proud club’s long-suffering supporters.

Dreams prohibited

The lead sequence in German TV reports on the Wolfsburg match was a pair of elderly Gladbach fans clearly enjoying what they saw. The image was designed to remind viewers of the glory years of the 1970s, when Borussia were German champions five times.

Gladbach's ever-cautious coach, though, rushed to verbally body-slam any premature euphoria.

“This is going to be a difficult season for us,” Favre warned. “We're going to have to fight for every point.”

That's probably not such a bad attitude, given that one of the best ways to win games is by making yourself hard to beat.

Nonetheless, Gladbach's hot start has come despite a relatively difficult early schedule: Bayern away and Stuttgart and Wolfsburg at home.

So whether Favre likes it or not, the Foals have suggested that this season's goal might be a lot higher than merely staying in the league.

Author: Jefferson Chase
Editor: Matt Hermann