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Cape Town - Borussia Dortmund manager Jurgen Klopp was bitterly disappointed by his team’s performance during the 2-1 defeat against Koln at the RheinEnergieStadion on Saturday.
Dortmund conceded their first goal in the 40th minute of the match and were never really able to wrestle control of the fixture after that. What perturbed Klopp the most about that result was that the players let themselves down, as oppose to Koln dominating proceedings.
"The way we played today just didn’t make sense. In the first half we misplaced so many passes, made silly mistakes which can be explained in any number of ways, but simply should not happen," a frustrated Klopp told journalists after the match.
"This left us with a really hard job getting back to defend the ensuing counter-attacks.
"Chasing back so often cost us the energy we needed at the death to remain calm.
"So once again we have shot ourselves in the foot," he added.
Dortmund are in a rather precarious position on the Bundesliga standings, as they have now lost their third consecutive league match.
That is compounded by the fact that they are now in the 14th position on the league standings, 13 points behind leaders Bayern Munich.
In all of their most recent defeats, Dortmund have been guilty of failing to capitalise on their opportunities in front of goal and some might argue that the absence of Robert Lewandowski is now being felt.
"At the critical moments in front of their goal, in front of our goal, we lacked composure.
"Up front we lacked precision, at the back concentration. Both goals we conceded resulted from lack of concentration and so we still have just seven points and have to deal with it," added Klopp.
However, the defenders have not been without fault either and Klopp acknowledges that both aspects of the game require urgent attention.
"We made it too easy for our opponents.
"We have to cut out these mistakes, not soon, not tomorrow, but now! Most days we will score goals and if we didn’t ship so many goals everything would be different.
"We need to sort it out, no-one’s going to help us," added a visibly upset Klopp.
