Why Jurgen Klopp Is Under Most Pressure at Dortmund Following Loss to Hamburg

Borussia Dortmund's poor run of form in the Bundesliga this season hit a new low with the 1-0 defeat to Hamburg on Saturday in front of their own fans. And it was entirely Jurgen Klopp's fault.

This recent defeat now puts the former Bundesliga champions in 13th position with just two wins and a draw from their first seven games. But before we starting banding around the "C" word (crisis), we must first distinguish just what's gone wrong this season.

The most notable disruption in Klopp's side this year is the manner in which he has gone about setting up the side from one game to the next.

This was never more notable than against Schalke last weekend, in the first Ruhr derby of the season, which saw Dortmund face off against their local rivals in an uncharacteristic 4-4-2 formation.

Klopp had decided to go with a very basic system on the day, with both Adrian Ramos and Ciro Immobile starting as a strike partnership whilst also leaving just Sven Bender and Matthias Ginter to fend off the waves of Schalke attacks.

Martin Meissner/Associated Press

This obviously didn't work, with the Gelsenkirchen side winning the match 2-1 and leaving Klopp with plenty of questions to answer.

As against Hamburg and even Mainz, Dortmund still had the means to at least match Schalke on the day. Yet instead of starting the influential Shinji Kagawa in an attacking role, Klopp decided to start another striker while playing a very basic flat midfield.

We also saw Ginter thrown into midfield with little to no prior experience in the role for his new club alongside Bender, a player who hasn't quite looked himself at all this season.

At times, it seems as though Klopp has not only struggled with injuries this season, but also in his ability to determine just which players are capable of stepping up and doing what is expected of them.

Yes, Dortmund are missing a number of first-team players, but the ones they still have should be beating most of the opposition they come up against each week in the Bundesliga.

Where clubs across Europe are having to deal with World Cup hangovers, Klopp's own team is full of quality players like Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, Lukasz Piszczek and even Kagawa—stars who had a full pre-season and should be thriving at this point in time.

This then taps into a deeper and even scarier prospect for Dortmund fans—Klopp can no longer galvanise these players like he once used to.

Even if we were to take all the dreadful injuries out of the picture for a moment and instead return to the first game of the season against Bayer Leverkusen, we still see a Dortmund side capable of winning these games but simply don't.

The Black and Yellows had a clean bill of health that day, with Henrikh Mkhitaryan and Marco Reus leading the attack, yet it was Leverkusen's young stars who stole the show.

Dortmund simply didn't look pumped up—a horrendous ethos that seems to have really latched on to the squad this season.

Martin Meissner/Associated Press

As odd as it may seem, this list of injuries that Dortmund currently have cannot excuse Klopp or his side from this dreadful start to the season.

What then truly baffles fans and critics alike is the manner in which this side raise their game in the Champions League only to plummet so low when they return to domestic matters.

To answer this, we would perhaps be best making an unlikely comparison to Schalke, who have also suffered a remarkable lack of consistency this season until they feature in key matches against bigger opposition.

Like the Royal Blues' own coach, Jens Keller, it would seem as though Klopp has struggled to get his squad to play with any form of determination until the bright lights and theme music from the Champions League come calling—or when Bayern Munich come to play.

Dortmund looked like their old self when they welcomed Arsenal to Signal Iduna Park or travelled to Belgium to take on Anderlecht, but just how much of those performances was down to Klopp's own man management?

A good coach should never be judged on his ability to raise his players' game in the blockbuster matches—these are the games each player dreams about—but when they must travel to Mainz or welcome lowly Hamburg to a match that looks like a foregone conclusion.

It's then that Dortmund continuously look complacent and Klopp looks his most vulnerable as coach of this team.

This is why the favoured coach in Dortmund is under the most pressure at the club right now.

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