What a week - for BVB and Marcel Schmelzer. Against Arsenal, the full-back made his return from injury and played a key role in the 2-0 win. Against Stuttgart, he was one of the players pushing the team forward. “We need to focus a lot better on defence. That has made us strong in the past.”

Last week was like a rollercoaster, wasn’t it? First, BVB beat Arsenal 2-0, then they lost 2-0 at Mainz and today they came back from a 2-0 deficit to secure a 2-2 draw against Stuttgart.

Yes, that sums it up well. The match in Mainz was a strange one as we conceded two unnecessary goals, missed a penalty and wasted a lot of chances. We scored two goals against Stuttgart, but we also made two errors at the back. And that was more or less all the chances Stuttgart had in the whole game. What is positive is that we fought our way back and even could have won the game.”

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Your free-kick set up Ciro Immobile to score the equaliser, and you also set up Lukasz Piszczek who beat the goalkeeper but not Antonio Rüdiger who slid in to clear the ball. Did you think it would go in?

Well, I hoped it would go in but then came Rüdiger…

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The match was summed up by Jürgen Klopp as a “2-2 victory”. Given the many injury worries, is the draw a good result?

“What we, the fit players, shouldn’t do is resting on the fact that other players are injured. We need to focus a lot better on defence. That has made us strong in the past. Our current problem is that every mistake gets punished. And we make too many mistakes at the moment. Our goal must be to make no mistakes at all, like against Arsenal, as we are always capable to score. We have a lot of quality up front, despite the many injuries to the squad.”

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This Saturday will see the Derby in Gelsenkirchen where a result counts more than anything else. A win there, and the games against Mainz and Stuttgart will be forgotten.

Our job will be to deny them opportunities and keep a clean sheet. Then we have a great chance to win this game.