Borussia Moenchengladbach punish poor Eintracht Frankfurt in Bundesliga restart

Well that was good fun. Gladbach deserved winners, Frankfurt must be much better from the start going forward. I'd suggest going with the team that ended the game rather than the one that was so poor for the first 70-ish minutes.

Frankfurt seem to have realised that if they don't score at least two goals they are going to lose and all of a sudden they are playing with a fire and grit that has been needed all game long. Lots of frustration on show.

Oh my god. That is the best save I have ever seen by a defender. Gladbach pass quickly, have an overload and the goalkeeper comes 20 yards off his line. Hofmann has an empty net to score into and Hinteregger manages to block it with his leg. Amazing.

Coming to a YouTube compilation near you. 

Andre Silva scores! Could the comeback be on?

Frankfurt 1 Gladbach 3

The stadium announcer plays loud music and does a full announcement - to nobody, remember - to make sure they (nobody) knows who scored. It's a great finish, a move put together in the final third where Silva gets into the box and has a chance to drive one into the bottom corner.

Gladbach making sure they have bodies back to deal with any attacks but they're keeping the forwards up the pitch to allow counters. There's not a lot of energy from either side now we're in the final push of the game, which is fair. Feels like a pre-season match.

Frankfurt players just look annoyed at each other. I'm not seeing an obvious team or leader or style and really I'm not actually sure at all what their plan is. Reminds me of when Spurs bought 100 players after selling Gareth Bale and weren't very good.

And that's game. Bensebaini smashes a penalty low to the left of the goal, the goalie reads it but can't quite get enough behind it. Power wins the battle.

Frankfurt 0 Gladbach 3

Bensebaini screams 'YAAAASSSS' or something similar and then drops to the floor.

Hmmmm. Embolo runs onto a through-ball in the box, gets a little nudge in the back from Ndicka and goes down. The referee seems sure, Ndicka knows he's done something bad, I'm not sure. This will be the game wrapped up.

Great goalkeeping by Trapp. He's spotted Herrmann's run ages before he makes it and is 30 yards off his line to intercept a through-ball sent behind the defence. 

Another howl of pain as lsanker gives Hofmann a kick in the shins. 

Herrmann is involved straight away, colliding into Hinteregger, who spends some time lying down to recover. He'll be OK.

A lovely move between Gladbach players draws me in so much that I forget I'm meant to be typing and then all of a sudden Plea cuts onto his right and bends a shot onto the frame of the goal, right on the top corner. That would have been magic had it gone in. But it didn't, and instead we are not watching Frankfurt do some below average attacking.

Embolo chases the ball down and knocks Hinteregger over. Nothing in it but lots of screamed 'HEY HEY HEY!!!! HEY!!!!' noises could easily make you think otherwise.

Monchengladbach make a sub. Thuram comes off, Herrmann on.

Dost goes to attack a cross, the ball is in the six yard box and it looks like he can score if he can beat the defender... but he pulls up and stops chasing when the ball bounces off the leg - not hand - of Bensebeini. Aaaand he's offside anyway. Or his teammate is. This is all a little confusing but let me summarise it by saying Frankfurt have no idea how to score.

Frankfurt getting annoyed that Gladbach are 'wasting time' by patiently keeping possession, which somewhat ironically is what Frankfurt did the entire of the first half.

Ooooohhhhh it's all kicking off now. Players come together ignoring all kinds of social distancing rules and Silva is booked for hacking down Ginter (I think)... although replays don't really show what happened. They both went for a header.

Frankfurt with most of the ball at the moment, trying to attack but finding that Gladbach are well prepared for it and waiting to hit on the counter. Thuram, Plea and Embolo have a lot of pace between them.

Bit more energy about Frankfurt in this half so far but Gladbach just look like the better team. 

Oooooohhhhhh Kamada nearly pulls one back! A quick attack, a bit of desire and pace, and a move down the left wing has Kamada cut inside - though it's obvious he's about to do it - and then has a shot blocked and deflected wide. 

Players are coming back out onto the pitch now, Gladbach hold back and come out second followed by the referees. The stadium DJ is playing Blink 182 over the speakers. "Work sucks, I know", chimes out as Frankfurt enter their home field 2-0 down.

 Decent game. Gladbach started well, Frankfurt didn't arrive with anything near the right level. 

Would imagine we'll see a different Frankfurt in the second half. It's almost as if they didn't expect Gladbach to be so revved up for this and are finding it tough just to keep possession. 

The game's gone a bit sleepy. Frankfurt aren't getting the ball forward quickly, having to patiently wait for a Gladbach defender to move out of position before slotting a ball in the space. 

Another thing you get to hear without a crowd is when players take a sore one. N'Dicka has been booked for stamping on someone's foot. 

Kostic has been decent so far for Frankfurt but he's getting wound up having to do most of the good work in the final third himself. 

Ohhhh and that should be 3-0. The ball from Plea on the right wing is mis-hit. Rather than curl it low towards the penalty spot he threads a straight pass to the goalkeeper, with Embolo perfectly placed to smash in a cross. 

Frankfurt push Gladbach towards their own goal, have players forward and lose the ball. Suddenly there's a two v three at the other end but Plea's pass to Embolo is soft and cut out. 

Kostic is booked for catching Lainer in the face accidentally while chasing a ball. That's very harsh. It's also getting quite feisty in the middle of the park, a few strong and scrappy challenges being put in.

I think that was the third booking of the game so far... while this picture below was the first. 

Kostic appears to be lining up a shot from a free-kick 30 yards out. Seems ambitious and OH HOLY HELL HE'S GOT HOLD OF THAT! I can feel the power of that just watching it through a screen but Sommer is equal to it and parries away with both hands. The follow up is booted over the bar... but at least that's a sign Frankfurt are still in this.

It should be 3-0. Possession is turned over, Embolo carries it, Plea has a chance to volley a shot from 20 yards but lifts it over. A little bit of composure was needed there.

Much better from Frankfurt! Kostic goes on a little run, dribbles out of a trap and the ball ends up being thumped through into the box for a forward, who takes it away from the goalkeeper near the front post, turns and stabs the ball through Sommer's legs, watching it roll past an unguarded net. Nobody gambled on that.

Frankfurt appear to have woken up. They've managed to put some passes together.

Gladbach can just sit, wait and hit on the counter all game long now. I'm interested to see how aggressively they press for the rest of the match. Frankfurt don't look confident, little movement in midfield. They look slower.

I wonder if the Frankfurt manager would make all five substitutions in the first half. Imagine that. That's a way to get yourself immortalised in pub quiz question history.

It's 2-0! Ah jeez. Frankfurt haven't turned up here! Marcus Thuram slots in from inside six yards with a simple ball cut across the box.

"There's a definite realism about the way they're passing this ball," says Martin Keown. A sentence I have re-read at least 10 times before publishing and still don't understand.

Embolo is a big lad and defenders have to make sure they're strong when trying to take the ball off him. He drops to take a pass to feet and is wiped out, getting a bit of a rise from the players around him who didn't like it.

Frankfurt struggling to keep the ball and stop Gladbach at the moment.

Imagine you wait 61 days to play a game of football and you concede after 39 seconds. Imagine it. 

39 seconds! Wow.

Frankfurt 0 Gladbach 1

That's not ideal for Frankfurt. The ball is turned over at halfway, it's shifted forwards with every pass and Plea slips as he tries to place a shot in the bottom corner... and manages it!

Right, here we go. After a wild guitar solo and some Fat Wreck style guitar punk, the referee is ready to blow his whistle. The guitar is over the speakers by the way, the referee isn't playing guitar. That would have been cool but sadly, didn't happen.

Now this is kind of weird. The stadium announcer is going through the usual pre-match routines, with music and player announcements being blared out over the speakers.

 I like this. They're trying to create an atmosphere, or at least a feeling of energy anyway.

I could write lots of words or  you could watch this highlights video. I assure you the video is better.

 If you don't want to watch it, let me tell you the game finished 4-2 to Gladbach and it was ace. 

This is as close to the stadium as I think we're getting.

 It'll do for now.

Hello there! I'm back, football is back, we're back, and for the first time probably ever, Frankfurt are the focus of our Saturday evening football liveblog. Interesting times indeed.

They are playing against Borussia Monchengladbach, who are a team I need to make sure are permanently on my clipboard in order to more quickly update this blog. Spell check can't save me now.

The team news is in and this is what the starting XIs look like:

And here is Gladbach:

There are some names in there you should know, some you might be aware of and a few that even I'm not too familiar with other than looking them up on Football Manager in preparation for this. Gladbach are a decent side and should be able to come away with a win if they can find their rhythm today - something that Dortmund struggled with in the first 15 minutes of the game that finished earlier today. 

There aren't any photos available from inside the stadium, which explains the picture of the bus at the top of this page, and I can only assume that is because of delays for media getting into the stadium with social distancing or some other sort of difficulty relevant to that. 

For an idea of how good these teams are, here's the table: