Werder fell to a 1-3 home defeat to Borussia Mönchengladbach on Saturday. “We made mistakes and didn’t get the goals when going forward. We didn’t set ourselves up for a good game,” said Max Kruse after the game. Florian Kohfeldt’s side have some work to do following their second home defeat in a row. “We don’t need to question our groundwork, but we need to work on the individual mistakes,” said the boss.
Max Kruse: “We did well in the first half. We sat deep and wanted to prevent the counter. We conceded at the worst times; just before and just after half time. Because of that, we didn’t get anything today.”
Frank Baumann: “The goals came too easily and then you’re on the back foot again. When you make mistakes so easily, it’s not just top teams that punish you. We’re going through a tough period, but we performed well today.”
Maximillian Eggestein: “Unlike in Mainz, we kept to our own style of play. That was a positive today. We were just poor in Mainz. We conceded two goals from set pieces today, and we didn’t take our chances. I see that as more of a lack of concentration than a lack of quality.”
Martin Harnik: “Our goal was well-worked. We had nothing to lose after that, but we didn’t take enough of our chances. Gladbach showed us what it means to be efficient.”
Florian Kohfeldt: “On the surface, it was a game where we didn’t take our chances and made too many mistakes at the back. We had to defend better for the first two goals – we shouldn’t be conceding them, no matter what quality Gladbach have. The game really highlighted what we’re missing. We’re not scoring enough goals going forward at the moment and we need to work on ourselves at the back, especially in supposedly simple set-piece situations.”
Frank Baumann: “Three defeats hurt, of course, but the boss knows how to get through this situation. We won’t just go back to our daily business, we’ll calmly analyse the three defeats.”
Max Kruse: “Three weeks ago, we were talking about whether we should be aiming to qualify for the Champions League. Now, we’re talking about whether we should aim to finish mid-table. We don’t need to talk about what position we’re in every week. We’re seventh and close to the European spots. The situation is under control, but we need points at the moment. How we get them doesn’t matter.”
Martin Harnik: “The defeats hurt, of course, but we have to get through it as a team.”
Maximilian Eggestein: “Three defeats are difficult to process. No one said that it would be easy.”
Florian Kohfeldt: “We’ve just spoken about the situation in the dressing room, because everyone’s going away tomorrow. It wasn’t a dramatic drop in our performance level in my eyes. It’s individual errors, that we need to clearly address and work on. Apart from the first half in Mainz, when we were very poor, we can’t criticise ourselves in the three defeats.
Martin Harnik: “Three defeats hurts. We have to stop conceding. We have a lot of time now to analyse everything and that’s what we’ll do.”
Niklas Moisander: “I hope that we can use the international break to come back stronger.”
Max Kruse: “We’ve got two weeks now to work on winning in Freiburg.”
Florian Kohfeldt: “I’m quite glad about the international break. The players can get some distance with their national sides and we can catch our breath, but it’s not the most popular time with the fans. We have to avoid panicking and we need to keep our feet on the ground. Punishing the boys in training or anything like that is just stupid. We won’t play a friendly, because we simply won’t have enough players who need to keep fit. Freiburg will be an important game for us, and we’ll prepare for it with a good week of training.”
Florian Kohfeldt: “We spoke briefly at half time and he said that he could play for a few more minutes. I wanted to keep the positioning the same but go a bit more attacking, so that’s why Jojo came on.”
