FC St. Pauli

Alexander Blessin on...

…the injury situation: "Carlo Boukhalfa suffered a dead leg, so we took him out of training today, and we also took Connor Metcalfe out after a very intensive session yesterday. He'll train in full again tomorrow. Philipp Treu is carrying a slight knock but trained again. As far Lars Ritzka, we're in constant discussions with him. He's trained and we'll see if he can play. And I was very surprised by Manolis Saliakas. He trained really well and had the highest values yesterday. He's working well and is ahead of schedule. He may well be in the squad. Robert Wagner has taken his first steps with the team and came through the sessions well."

...Eric Smith, who returned to defensive midfield at Mainz: "You have to say a lot went right. It was one of our best 45-minute showings this season. Eric had a few problems with pushing up early on, especially as far as the rest defending was concerned, but that got better and better as the game wore on."

...opponents Borussia Dortmund: "They had some problems but may have escaped them a bit with the 6-0 win over Union Berlin. We'll see if that performance can tell us anything, though. In the reverse fixture they adapted their game and tried to enter the box with crosses from the flanks. We'll have to watch out again. Playing in the middle, Pascal Groß dominated with four assists last week. In our analysis of we have to do and which spaces we have to see, we'll point out a few things again. Dortmund have their strengths in the high tempo in transition. Up front they have a target man in Serhou Guirassy who holds the ball up well. We have to be wide awake for 90 minutes and more. We didn't play too badly in the first game and could and perhaps should have taken something from it."

...Dortmund's poor away form: "You can't ignore it. We want to do our bit to ensure it stays that way and make them feel uncomfortable away from home from minute one. We want to be incisive and tenacious in the tackle and take away their appetite for the game like that. We were ugly in the reverse fixture and aim to be ugly again."

...the lack of goals: "It's the job of the coaching team to give it some thought and that's what we're doing. We question ourselves every day and try to find solutions. We're self-critical and know we have to do better. Looking at the games against Freiburg and Mainz, it was important to me to see we created a host of chances against two very good defensive teams. The task now is to find the last bit that's missing. We've watched certain situations again and talked about going for the ball with more conviction. It's also a question of confidence, and you can get that from specific game-related exercises in training. I remain confident we'll turn things round and score more goals again."

Photos: Witters