Hannover - Dortmund - how to give away three points

After a night of sleep I still can't get over yesterday's result. Actually Hannover is a terrific team and there is no shame in losing against them, but there is when you lose like we did. It was one of our most unnecessary defeats, and we had a lot of them. So how did that happen?

First (laudable) 70 minutes

The first 70 minutes were a classic Borussia Dortmund match. Very dominant, much possession, lot's of chances and none taken, except for the beauty scored by Shinji Kagawa. Our pressing was good, Hannover set back and waited for their chances on the counter, which was to expect since Hannover are a very good counter attacking team, who have problems to make the play themselves, as the 0-0 draw against Standard Liege has shown.

Even though Dortmund had no defensive minded defensive midfielder (funny, isn't it?!) as Sven Bender and Sebastian Kehl were injured/suspended many important tackles were won by Gündogan and for the rest some last ditch tackles by Subotic had to be done but nothing too dangerous by Hannover.
Perisic started from the beginning to replace a tired Kevin Großkreutz and in my eyes he did very will for the first time, linked up well with Kagawa and Lewandowski, created danger space and my favorite part: He is capable of holding the ball, a quality Großkreutz and Kuba are lacking of.



No concept after Kagawa's goal

After Dortmund scored their first goal the game didn't really change, Hannover set back, Dortmund tried to break down their defense. Generally there is nothing wrong with that, but in our situation it would have been smart to sit back and let Hannover to try to break down our defense while we get spaces for counter attacks, in such a season with so many games we have to think economically.

But we didn't and thus we lost our game because we were not clever enough.
Our major problem was that our back line didn't pushed high enough while our offense pressed deep into Hannover's half, chasing for balls you usually don't chase for 10 minutes before end. So we were too stretched and were only chasing shadows.
Another effect of our style of play is tiredness, even if you still got the legs you sometimes lose your focus and more and more 50-50 situations went towards Hannover's direction. Which ultimately led to unnecessary fouls resulting in unnecessary standard situations, from which Hannover scored their equalizer that gave them the euphoria to score the second.

Oh captain my captain


Another problem was, with Hummels subbed off, there wasn't a leader in our team anymore, who could have stepped on the ball and calmed the game down, give commands or anything else. I wish Klopp would have said something like "hold the ball" for once, since we immediately attacked after gaining possession. Taking the pace out of the game would have brought time and mental relaxation, which could have brought the focus back (would, could, should... I know, I know). Roman Weidenfeller might be the captain, but let's face it, he can't do much about it though. Everyone was occupied with himself in the last minutes which certainly is another reason why we lost.


Tactical errors


As I said, we didn't play it very cleverly this time. In the dying minutes of the game our offensive midfielder's chased the ball while our defense was sitting too deep, which left a huge space for the opponent, even though we have the ball in figure 1, we will be easily out numbered if Hannover gains the ball which is irresponsible 5 minutes before the end. Standing compact and defending as an unit (till the end) would have won us the game.

Figure 1
Huge Gap between defense and midfield

Mistakes before the 2:1

Here we have a good example of what went wrong in the last 10, 15 minutes: As you already can see in figure 1 the gap between offense and defense was wide, there was no defending as a team, neither was everyone behind the ball, nor did they put pressure on the opponent, which in other words is: refusing to play Bundesliga football.

Here are two approaches, how Dortmund could have dealt with the situation, but also the whole last 15 minutes of the game.
In figure 2 you can see again, how huge the gap between offense and defense is, even though there is no real danger yet we aren't putting any pressure on the ball, but still far stretched. Headless.

If those two players in the black circle would have waited for Hannover to come over the midfield line before they put pressure on them, we would have had something called an "organized defense", Hannover 1:0 down (not in this picture, but I'm trying to make a point here) would have had much more trouble to break our defense down and probably would have failed, but also'd have given us space to counter attack.

Figure 2
Black circle = striker's actual position
Orange circle = where they should be
Yellow space = space and time attacker can pick out his pass without pressure

Figure 3 is pretty much the same, but with a higher defensive line and a higher defensive midfield, which a) wouldn't have given Hannover so much space to attack, but b) and more importantly we could have chased Hannover and put pressure on them as we usually do, without a gap of the size of Australia between our lines. However figure 2 and figure 3 aren't that different, one more attacking, one a bit deeper-lying but both with one huge similarity: Compactness.

Figure 3
Violet line = where defense is
Pink line = where defense should be
Blue circle = where defensive midfield is
Red circle = wehere defensive midfield should be
Orange = gap between Defense and strikers, aka freedom for the attacking player

I hope Klopp will fix this problem and our boys will mature and maybe get a "dirty" 1:0 win in the future instead of losing 1:2. Also Großkreutz should have made it 2:0 before, but I didn't want to mention it for the sake of my blood pressure. (YOU ALSO GOT A LEFT FOOT FFS!!)

Heja BVB

feel free to comment, criticise, rant or whatever is on your mind.