Manuel Baum: “The injuries are a challenge”

It’s all about keeping their heads up and moving forward for the FCA first team. And the first step to that end was Tuesday’s training session in preparation for Saturday’s away trip to face Hannover (Kick-off 15:30 CET). The loss last weekend at the hands of TSG 1899 Hoffenheim has been quickly forgotten about. Manuel Baum spoke after the session about... ... the growing injury list: “It’s very frustrating that we’ve sustained another injury last weekend and such a crucial one at that. It’s been ligament injuries in particular that we’ve been struck with. Nevertheless, I see it as a challenge. It’s a bad situation to be in, but we also had a lot of injuries last season. The main problem is that without Alfred Finnbogason, Jeffrey Gouweleeuw and Caiuby, you lack key players with a lot of Bundesliga experience." ... the second half of the season: “We showed in Dortmund that we can play with anyone in this league. We’ve been too inconsistent since we came back from the winter break though. That is linked to the fact that we’ve been without our most experienced players and are having to call upon young players or players in their first season at this level. Having ups and downs is normal, and when I said that our goal hadn’t changed when we were further up the table, I said it because you can always run into injury troubles like we have done recently.” ... FCA’s chances: “I think that we need to get back to what we were doing before and adapt it to every opponent that we play. We like to press people high partially while also sitting deep, so that we can get opportunities to hit people on the counter-attack. We have to see what tactics are most suitable to the players that we have at our disposal. It’s the same for our build-up play. Keeping possession was a big problem for us against Hoffenheim. We lost the ball too much and we have to play with more determination.” ... the team’s morale: “The boys are always in good spirits and fight hard, but that doesn’t always give us the results that we want. The underdog mentality that we’ve had since the beginning of the season eased the pressure on us a bit, so we need to get back to that.”