Down in the dumps

Teams that win titles with the aplomb Dortmund showed last season are often described as well-oiled machines, and cliché as the comparison may be, in one respect it's very apt. To run smoothly, machines need even seemingly insignificant cogs to function perfectly.

At least, that's been the impression in the last four weeks, as Dortmund have failed to win a match.

Coach Jürgen Klopp's Wunderkinder have already lost more games than in the entire first half of last season and are eight points adrift of pace-setters Bayern Munich. And Sunday's 2-1 defeat at Hanover, which saw Dortmund concede a pair of last-minute goals, hurt most of all.

"We let that one slip from our hands," Klopp fumed to reporters after the final whistle. "This is a loss that feels really crappy."

How crappy should Klopp feel? Germany's Bild tabloid, always eager to find or manufacture epic drama, sees last year's champs in a full-bore crisis, but in truth Dortmund are far from melting point.

Borussia's three Bundesliga losses have all come against decent-to-good sides in competitive matches that Klopp's men could, with a bit of luck, have won. And they've still scored more than they've conceded - hardly the sign of a team in meltdown mode.

But there is legitimate cause for concern. Dortmund have now lost two on the trot in the Bundesliga, something they didn't do at all last season. And that pair of defeats showed that Klopp has failed to correct his team's major shortcoming.

Blown opportunities

After a cruel run of results, Dortmund fans could be forgiven for singing to the tune of Simon and Garfunkel: "Where have you gone Lucas Barrios/Our nation turns its lonely eyes to you."

The Argentine-Paraguayan center forward is sidelined with injury and without last year's top scorer, the goals simply have not been coming. In their last four matches, Dortmund have only scored three times, and that's not a ratio that's going to rack up the victories.

Considering their dominance last season, Dortmund were astonishingly profligate with their chances, and that tendency has continued into 2011-12.

Dortmund rank near the bottom in opportunities converted, and Robert Lewandowski's accuracy rate is one of the worst in the league for center forwards. That weakness was on ample display against Hanover, as Dortmund blew a couple of good chances to take an early and potentially decisive lead.

Last season, Klopp's troops compensated by generating huge numbers of chances. They had already scored 16 times after six rounds in 2010-11. But this time round they're finding it much harder to break team's down.

The brick wall phenomenon

As expected, the loss of last season's midfield rudder and Bundesliga MVP Nuri Sahin to Real Madrid has proved a challenge. Sahin was able to find gaps no other player could and that vision is sorely lacking this time round as Borussia struggle to unlock defenses. Dortmund now create an average number of opportunities, and the result has been an average number of goals: seven in six league matches.

Klopp is struggling to integrate newcomers Ilkay Gündogan and Ivan Perisic into the squad, and the absence of Mario Götze in the league due to suspension has further throttled down the relentless forward momentum Dortmund showed last season.

Strikingly, in salvaging a one-all draw against a dire Arsenal side last week in the Champions League, central defender Mats Hummels spent much of the second half serving as a makeshift playmaker.

What's more, opponents have learned how to play Dortmund. In round 5, after handing Dortmund their first home loss in more than a season, players for newly promoted Hertha Berlin said that their game plan had been to clog the middle, forcing Dortmund wide, where their attack is less effective.

Hanover used that template with similar success. Dortmund are still getting lots of men around the ball, but opponents are getting more bodies behind it, and that's also why Dortmund are doing more lateral than forward passing.

"At some point, we just stopped playing football," Klopp said of the Hanover match. "We got passive and conceded too many free-kicks."

Maintaining morale

Some of Dortmund's current problems should solve themselves. Götze will return next round, and Barrios should be able to make his comeback soon.

It's also reasonable to expect that quality players like Gündogan and Persic will improve as they get settled, in which case Dortmund could begin moving forward again.

But as Klopp knows all too well, football is often a game of intangibles. Dortmund's dominance last season resulted not just from excellent individual performances or tactics, but from a sense of can't-lose euphoria that became a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Dortmund proved they could hold their nerve in 2010-11. In 2011-12, their most immediate task is to show they can maintain their intensity, even though their chances of retaining the league title look increasingly slim.

That's the X-factor within a still exciting and, at times, brilliant team. And only October will tell whether Klopp's men have the means to overcome what's been a humbling September.

Author: Jefferson Chase
Editor: Rob Turner