“Defensive stability and attacking solutions”

Just three days after the matchday press conference following the home game against VfL Osnabrück, HSV head coach Steffen Baumgart returned to the microphone to answer questions about the upcoming away game at Fortuna Düsseldorf on Friday evening. It was a short press conference for a short week of preparation, but the boss packed into 12 minutes all the important information about topics such as the absences of five players through illness or injury in Miro Muheim, Jean-Luc Dompe, Daniel Heuer Fernandes, Stephan Ambrosius and William Mikelbrencis. Steffen Baumgart also spoke about...

...their situation ahead of Matchday 25: After the Osnabrück game, which really affected us deeply, we’ve dusted ourselves off and worked well during the week. In football, you always have to move along straight away. There are still 30 points to play for this season, and we’re in a good position to achieve our goals, which are in our own hands. However, we’re not thinking about the next ten games and making predictions yet and we’re instead just taking it game by game. Now, it’s all about Düsseldorf, and the aim there is to put in a better performance and above all get a better result than last time out.

“We want to make more use of our situations and space than in the last two games”

…his approach to the game: We’ve got a lot of quality within the team – I’ve emphasised that from the beginning. We need to show this quality on the pitch in a goal-oriented manner. We need to have defensive stability, which we also had against Osnabrück in large parts as we only conceded three shots in the entire game, and one of those was the penalty we gave away. However, it’s also clear that we have to find better attacking solutions. When you have a striker like Robert Glatzel in your team, you need to get him the ball in dangerous positions. He dropped deeper more frequently last time out as he wanted to help in the build-up play. However, it’s about getting him into better shooting positions, which means that his teammates’ positioning is especially important. Laszlo Benes will play an important role in that regard – he’ll definitely start the game following his suspension.

...the opposition Fortuna Düsseldorf: They are usually focused on the defensive side of things and often sit deep. At the same time, they’re very good in transition and we need to be very careful as it’s not without reason that Düsseldorf have the best attack in the league with 50 goals. We want to counter that with high, aggressive pressing and we’re keen to make more use of the resulting situations and space than in the last couple of games. We also want to get a better result. We’ve got the opportunity to do that even thought it naturally won’t be easy.