FC St. Pauli

Head coach Fabian Hürzeler: "Congratulations on a deserved victory. Elversberg made the better start. They countered very well and their positioning was excellent when they won possession. They won a lot of second balls and had good pace. We failed to get control of the game and play with patience. We lacked presence in our gegenpressing and our rest defence wasn't good. We took the lead, which ought to have given us confidence, but conceded the equaliser out of the blue after the restart. We had a good spell after that and restored our lead but then suffered another quick setback with the equaliser. After that, our body language wasn't how it should be, and Elversberg made great use of the moments they had. We have to rediscover our sharpness off the ball and keep a clean sheet. That's always been our foundation and it's been lacking in our last few matches, which is disappointing."

Nikola Vasilj: "It's very disappointing to lose like that. We tried everything and threw everyone forward again at the end to somehow get the equaliser. I think it was of the worst performances from all of us today. We made a lot of simple mistakes and lost the individual duels and Elversberg took clinical advantage. We have to analyse that now."

Jackson Irvine: "We just weren't good in lots of areas. We lost possession far too easily, our pressing wasn't good and neither was our coverage against the counterattack. It's one of the hardest results to take, a year after our last home defeat. We're all very disappointed, but we have to accept that we weren't good enough today. We have to do better in the last five games, get back the belief that we deserve to be up there and reproduce the level we've shown all season. Elversberg pressed very well, but we have to find solutions to that. We had a good spell with some good chances – in the end it comes down to the details."

Johannes Eggestein: "We wanted much more from today's game, not just in terms of the result but also in the way we played. We wanted more stability. We didn't impose our game on them enough today. We were 2-1 up and could see it was working, but we gave the ball away too often, lost too many tackles and weren't solid enough as a team. I don't really have an explanation for it today."

Marcel Hartel: "We started well to be fair but ultimately lacked conviction. Elversberg had some good chances and Niko did well to keep us in it. We took another deserved lead after the restart but conceded the equaliser far too quickly and in the end had to accept defeat, which we need to analyse quickly. We knew Elversberg were definitely capable of finding footballing solutions. We lacked precision today and have to do better at Hannover next week."

Horst Steffen (Elversberg head coach): "I'm delighted with the win and the way we played. We had to do a lot of defending but had some good moments in transition that we made good use of. The lads kept playing football in a phase when things weren't going so well, and the lads who came on showed what they can do right away and that enabled us to level at 2-2. That increased our belief that we could get something here today and I'm very pleased with the way my boys performed."

Photos: FC St. Pauli