Part One – Ruhr rivals in disarray – Borussia Dortmund

By Kevin Hatchard

The final whistle went at Signal Iduna Park, and the unfailingly loyal fans of Borussia Dortmund applauded their team, even though they’d lost at home to a side at the foot of the Bundesliga standings for the first time in ten years.

Players stared blankly into the middle distance, defeated and dismayed. Hamburg, who had collected just two points and one goal in a typically haphazard start to the campaign, had won 1-0. To rub salt into Dortmund’s wounds, that victory was fully deserved.

I am a fully paid-up member of the Jurgen Klopp Appreciation Society. There’s barely a football fan on the planet – Schalke supporters aside – who wouldn’t want to spend an hour or two in the company of “Kloppo”, pint in hand. Dortmund’s coach is a magnificent motivator and tactician, and his players would run through proverbial brick walls for him; given the injury list, you’d think they’d been running through real brick walls!

Klopp does however have to carry the can for what’s been an awful start to the Bundesliga season. In fairness, he has accepted full responsibility for a four-match winless run that has seen BVB drop ten points behind the leaders Bayern Munich. Dortmund’s title challenge hangs by a gossamer thread.

“I am responsible for the training and the adjustment of the guys,” Klopp accepted after the defeat to Hamburg. “Our problem is we can’t get a stable shape or hold onto the ball. There are explanations for our problems. We need to now endure every criticism that comes our way, and some guys need to assess their performance.”

Klopp’s claims of mitigating circumstances ring true. An eye-watering injury list includes Marco Reus, Henrikh Mkhitaryan, Ilkay Gundogan and Nuri Sahin, and any team would struggle with such absences. Dortmund have also seen a key player defect to their biggest rivals Bayern Munich in each of the last two summers, with Mario Gotze and Robert Lewandowski now turning out for the Bavarian giants.

Klopp is untouchable in Dortmund, and rightly so after delivering two Bundesliga titles and taking Die Schwarzgelben to a Champions League final. That said, there are two nagging issues which haven’t been suitably addressed, and both were painfully apparent against Hamburg.

The first is the porous nature of Dortmund’s defence, which has looked vulnerable all season, and has been highlighted by the club’s new captain Mats Hummels.

“We need more stability in defence,” he told the club website. “We need to defend better as a team, and all 11 players must play their part. If you concede two goals a game, it’s very hard to win.”

In their back-to-back title-winning seasons, Dortmund conceded just 22 and 25 goals respectively, with a regular back four of Hummels, Neven Subotic, Marcel Schmelzer and Lukasz Piszczek the bedrock of the side. All four have suffered injury problems in the last 18 months, with Subotic missing the second half of last season with a serious knee injury. Many point to these injuries as the reason for defensive decline, as well as the lack of adequate midfield screening in the absence of Gundogan and Sahin. That is fair comment, but more worrying is the lack of concentration and defensive shape that has crept into Dortmund’s play.

BVB have already shipped 12 league goals in seven games, and in some matches they have made errors that would make a schoolboy blush. Both goals in the recent Revierderby loss at Schalke were hideous – Hummels lost Joel Matip for the opener, and the lackadaisical Adrian Ramos clearance that led to the winner beggared belief. In home games against Bayer Leverkusen and Hamburg, there were gaping holes in the defence that you could have driven a tank through.

When Dortmund were winning titles, Signal Iduna Park was a scary place to go, with teams beaten before they even took to the turf. While the raucous support from the home fans is still something to behold, the fear factor simply isn’t there. From the first minute of Saturday’s game, Hamburg felt they could get a result. They were happy to throw men forward, and Lewis Holtby and Nicolai Muller found they could penetrate the Dortmund rearguard at will. The league’s bottom side, who hadn’t won any of their previous 14 games, had no fear facing Klopp’s men on their own turf.

In their two title-winning campaigns, Dortmund suffered just one home defeat in each season. This time around they have already been bested twice on home soil, and signs of a worrying trend were there last season, as Dortmund lost four home matches. As Manchester United found out during their excruciating transition season under the hapless David Moyes, once teams aren’t scared of visiting you, it becomes incredibly hard to maintain the dominance you once enjoyed.

In stark contrast to their domestic struggles, Borussia Dortmund have made a perfect start to their Champions League campaign. Their 2-0 win over Arsenal was as close to a classic BVB performance under Klopp as you could get, with relentless pressing, and lightning speed on the counter-attack. The following 3-0 win at Anderlecht cemented Dortmund’s place at the top of the group.

Klopp has angrily denied suggestions that his players can’t get motivated for the daily grind of the Bundesliga, but until domestic results start to pick up, that mud will stick. Klopp was a fine centre-back, and he needs to solve Dortmund’s defensive conundrum quickly, before Bayern disappear over the horizon.