Borussia Dortmund vs VfB Stuttgart preview - Bobic: We're in transition

Posted Tuesday, September 23, 2014 by PA

Stuttgart director of sport Fredi Bobic says he will not step down from his position, despite a wave of criticism from fans, unless he feels he is no longer trusted by his club.

Cries of 'Bobic out' grew in volume during Stuttgart's 2-0 Bundesliga defeat at home to Hoffenheim on Saturday.

That result left the Swabians rooted to the foot of the table with just one goal and one point all season, and Bobic has been made the scapegoat.

It was he who hired and fired Christian Gross, Jens Keller, Bruno Labbadia, Thomas Schneider, Huub Stevens and Armin Veh in recent years, with only Labbadia able to deliver European football.

The chances of Veh succeeding in that undertaking are looking slim, but Bobic has defended his choices and himself ahead of Wednesday night's unenviable trip to Borussia Dortmund.

"We're in the middle of a process which is far from concluded and will still see many more changes," Bobic told Kicker magazine.

"It's not something you can simply do at the push of a button, and suddenly you are fifth in the league. That's wishful thinking."

Being 18th in the table does not really indicate any progress from a side who struggled to survive last term, but Bobic has not yet given resignation any consideration.

"Anybody can just run away from things, but I'm not the type," he said. "Only if I had to do some convincing work to keep hold of my job, would I throw in the towel myself."

Away from Swabia, hosts Dortmund have enough problems of their own.

With two wins and two defeats, they have hardly made an ideal start to the campaignn - especially considering they won all four of their opening matches a year ago, and still finished 19 points behind champions Bayern Munich.

"How does the saying go: 'to start with, we were just unlucky, and then we got some bad luck on top'," said coach Jurgen Klopp, who saw Henrikh Mkhitaryan's name added to the growing list of injured players on Monday.

Klopp will struggle to find 11 names to put on his team-sheet on Wednesday, with Ilkay Gundogan emerging as an emergency option.

The Germany international has not played in over a year and was being eased back slowly, but, with the lack of alternatives, Klopp may have to speed up his return to action.