09.09.2010
News-Archive

You always have Pressure in Bundesliga

Ahead of the important away game to Borussia Moenchengladbach (Saturday 15.30h CET) manager Michael Skibbe offered the latest on the situation of the team.

Hello Mr Skibbe, after the internatinal break this weekend Bundesliga will continue. What’s the status of the team’s fitness?

Chris is much better than a few days ago. We’ll see if he’s fit enough for the game. I’m happy that he returned to the team anyway, but he’ll need to gain some power still. So he is in the squad on Saturday, and because he’s so important to us from a performance point of view he might even start.

And how about the other recently injured players, for example Fenin, Kormaz or Nikolov?

They’re all back in normal training, Oka Nikolov is fit and will probably play in goal on Saturday. We’ll have to see with Ioannis Amanatidis who needs to pass on today’s and tomorrow’s training. Aleksandar Vasoski will meet the doc who operated on his knee. Operations like these are difficult and this medic knows Vasoski’s knee best, and he also knows about the impact of professional sports. We’ll have to wait.

Borussia Mönchengladbach started well into the season. Two weeks ago they beat Bayer Leverkusen 6-3. What are your chances?

We’ll be able to compete and want to gain at least one point in Moenchengladbach. I was impressed by their performance against Leverkusen. They played well, but they were also lucky. We will try to avoid making the mistakes Leverkusen made, and to create our own chances, rather than giving away chances to Gladbach.

What do you think of Moenchengladbach in general?

They have a very dynamic offensive play, with fast players on the wings and strong forwards in the center. They’re also tough in one on ones and quite aggressive. Their style of play is similar to the one of last season. That’s what we’re looking at, and that’s from what we’ll hopefully come to some useful conclusions.

Eintracht's last Bundesliga win was on April the 3rd. Is this a psychological disadvantage?

No, I don't think so. We just need to continue to try and gain points, and not to get stuck in the lower regions of the table.

So the pressure is on?

Yes and no. You always have pressure in Bundesliga. It’s tricky after two defeats and the media play their part in that. But that’s not different for other teams.

There was a break last weekend, was it good for the team?

We’ll see that on Saturday. In my view the break was good, the remaining players trained well and also in a different way to how we usually exercise. As there were not many players the usual tactical training was not possible.

Is the starting line up fix already?

Mostly yes. We analysed Gladbach and their way of playing football, and we trained accordingly. Ahead of Saturday we’ll have another two tactical sessions and we’ll hope to succeed.

What was different in training?

We tried a different approach, for example we exercised shooting, and converting chances, we also pushed set pieces and dead ball situations. I think we’ll come well prepared. But I also hope that Gladbach’s performance against Leverkusen was an exception. We’re optimistic and hope for at least one point!