FC St. Pauli

Timo Schultz on…

...the personnel situation: "Philipp Ziereis pulled out of yesterday's session after about an hour in what was more or less a precautionary measure. He should be available to play. Afeez Aremu and Daniel-Kofi Kyereh are back in training, which gives us two more options. Kofi wasn't sidelined for long, so I can see him returning to action quickly, but with Afeez we have to be careful. It's taken us longer to get him back to match fitness."

...Daniel-Kofi Kyereh: "He's an extremely important player. If you look at his stats in terms of his goals and assists, he's incredibly valuable to us, but the way he plays football is very important for us as well. The players who have stepped into the breach for him have done a really good job and staked their claim to a regular berth in that position, but if you look at the whole time, Kofi has earned a bonus. If he's fully fit, he plays. I don't think I'm saying too much there."

...the increased focus on tackling in training: "This week it's simply been a case of us wanting to do a bit of work on our sharpness when pressing the ball. The simplest way is to win your personal duels. At Regensburg we know we'll constantly be called upon to hold our own in the personal duels. Our basic approach hasn't changed. It's important for the lads to realise that we have a plan and aren't simply doing things for the sake of it. We aim to make one or two small adjustments in the way we play football in order to keep on being successful."

...the mood in the camp: "Something would be wrong if the mood weren't good with us in second place. We're not going to mope simply because we're going through a phase where things aren't going so well in terms of our results. We enjoy coming here every day, we enjoy working together every day. We'll keep trying to work hard in every session. We know we have a top group of players even though we haven't been getting the results recently."

...the reverse fixture against Regensburg: "We had to work very hard to break them down in the end and that will be the case again this time. We have to make sure our pressing is good and keep trying to cause them problems. If we do that, we'll create the odd goalscoring opportunity or two and hopefully score enough goals."

...the opposition: "They're a very awkward team to play against. They've contested an incredible number of aerial duels in attack, more than twice as many as us. That's a small reflection of the way they play. They like to get forward as quickly as possible. They have an enormous physical presence and always run themselves into the ground. They thrive on their compact shape and the fact every player gets involved in defence and in attack. Their attacking set pieces are a genuine weapon. We know what to expect and go to Regensburg in optimistic mood. An away win would be nice, but we'll need two more decent training sessions and above all a very good performance against very good opposition."

Photo: Witters