Borussia Dortmund coach Jurgen Klopp has said that he is optimistic regarding his side's survival chances as they head into the second half of the Bundesliga season.
The Westphalians occupied the penultimate position in the Bundesliga at the turn of the year after a dramatic fall from grace and, rather than challenging for a place in Europe next season, their focus is on avoiding relegation. Klopp, who has presided over the worst half a season in his coaching career, remains convinced they will pull away from danger and soon be able to forget about the first half of the campaign.
"We're not naively optimistic and we know that the pressure is not going to decrease, but we see potential and we know that we can sort it out," he told the Welt newspaper.
"Whatever happens, the end of the 34th match of the season is going to be the finishing point of an extraordinary season. It's going to be a season which will be full of unhappy memories. Finishing the first half of the season in 17th place feels like how taking a holiday on a bed of nails must feel."
But in spite of the poor results, Klopp insists he has been through much worse during his coaching career to date. However, not even he could have been prepared for what happened between August and December, when Dortmund managed to win only four while losing ten - more than any other side in the division.
"I avoided relegation on the final day of the season twice with Mainz," he recalled. "That was not particularly great either. It's not like we didn't have any solutions, it's just we didn't have any time to use them. It just went blow by blow and it was pretty hefty.
"And we are Borussia Dortmund, we wear yellow shirts and we're easy to spot. We're runners up, former champions, Champions League finalists, everywhere you go, people say 'you'll manage', but then we get torn apart on the field. It was like a spiral, particular towards the end of the first half of the season when we really didn't play well.
"But anybody who has been through negative moments has got to try to use them. We've got to accept that the first half of the season was how it was, but we mustn't carry it around with us like a rucksack the whole time."
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