The way we played today just didn’t make sense. In the first half we mis-placed so many passes, made silly mistakes which can be explained in any number of ways, but simply should not happen. This left us with a really tough job getting back to defend the ensuing counter-attacks,” complained Jürgen Klopp in the aftermath of his side’s 2-1 defeat in Cologne.

 

 

“Chasing back so often cost us the energy we needed at the death to remain calm. So once again we have shot ourselves in the foot,” Klopp said before adding, “At the critical moments in front of their goal, in front of our goal, we lacked composure. Up front we lacked precision, at the back concentration. Both goals we conceded resulted from lack of concentration and so we still have just seven points and have to deal with it.”

Cut out the mistakes. Not soon, not tomorrow, BUT NOW!

The coach was quite specific about the defensive problems, “We made it too easy for our opponents. We have to cut out these mistakes, not soon, not tomorrow, but now! Most days we will score goals and if we didn’t ship so many goals everything would be different. We need to sort it out, no-one’s going to help us.”

Whether Ilkay Gündogan, Marco Reus and Henrikh Mkhitaryan will be considered for selection for the game in Istanbul after returning from long breaks is as yet undecided. “We didn’t really want to start both Ilkay and Marco in this game, or that Ilkay would play 90 minutes. But they seem to have come through it okay. Throughout the game we were asking them if they felt okay.”

A ray of hope, perhaps, because Reus and Gündogan were among the better BVB players today.