Dortmund’s season is spiralling out of control after own goals on and off pitch | Andy Brassell

It had to be him. Waldemar Anton can’t have relished changing ends at half-time on Saturday. The performance of Borussia Dortmund’s big summer purchase had already captured the defender’s time so far in Nord-Rhine Westphalia in microcosm, as his blind backpass led to former teammate Deniz Undav going one-on-one with Gregor Kobel. Only a swift intervention from Emre Can prevented Anton’s error from leading to a Stuttgart goal.

When BVB moved from defending the Südtribune in the second period, it became even more uncomfortable for Anton. He was that bit physically closer to the away Stuttgart fans in the north-eastern corner of Signal Iduna Park and their jeers and boos became more audible. They had been furious when the Uzbek-born centre-back had left, not so long after Anton had extended his contract and spoken of his pride at becoming Stuttgart’s captain. If the move north had come with a hefty bump in pay and status for Anton, it has so far been far from a resounding success and in a game in which Stuttgart created little of substance, his next inadvertent intervention felt almost inevitable.

It is tempting to suggest that no clarity in the boardroom means precious little on the pitch. Kovac should have been the headline here but he was overshadowed not only by the misadventures of Anton and Guirassy but by the midweek exit of Sven Mislintat, the transfer guru whose presence has stoked discord almost from the moment he returned to the club for a second spell. The internal relief at Mislintat’s departure was made clear with BVB’s official statement last Thursday, 29 words of text that you would struggle to match for curtness.

Those on-edge vibes will not end with Mislintat’s exit, as the ostentatious billboard advertising for controversial club sponsor Rheinmetall underlined. Six points behind Stuttgart with 13 games to go should not be fatal in itself to hopes of returning to the Champions League. But there is nothing in the ether to suggest BVB are capable of summoning the consistency to hunt their rivals down (and not just Stuttgart – Sunday’s win for RB Leipzig against St Pauli putting them into fourth, a further point ahead).

Stuttgart are a useful yardstick, though. This is also a huge club with a storied past that lived in administrative chaos for years, and is showing that reorganisation is a clear route to improved performance, whatever the budget. They get past the departure of key players because the approach, upstairs and downstairs (with the excellent Sebastian Hoeness on the bench) is consistent. Dortmund’s stars, be it Guirassy with his goals this season or Erling Haaland and Jude Bellingham in the recent past, merely paper over the cracks.

If Kovac can lift the mood and make Dortmund competitive again, in the Bundesliga and with a Champions League playoff against Sporting on the horizon, it would be quite the achievement. It will be hard, with the schedule against the new coach as much as the situation. “Because we play every three or four days, we have a lot of video study ahead of us,” Kovac underlined. He is a coach who is good at getting his players to focus on the basics, which is all that can be done now to try and arrest a season which has spiralled out of control.

Talking points

• The dynamics of next week’s huge face-off between Bayer Leverkusen and Bayern Munich changed with this weekend’s results; Bayern winning 3-0 against Werder Bremen on Friday night with a pair of Harry Kane penalties and Leverkusen only managing a goalless draw at Wolfsburg means that the gap at the top is now eight points. Leverkusen couldn’t really afford to lose before and now, perhaps, they have a near obligation to win.
  
  

• The schedule is the X-factor here, with Bayern facing a Champions League trip to Celtic on Wednesday. Leverkusen’s own midweek exertions were clear in an uncharacteristically flat performance at Wolfsburg after Wednesday’s effort in the Pokal quarter-final comeback against second-tier rivals Köln, with a trademark 96th-minute Patrik Schick leveller and an extra-time winner by Victor Boniface needed to seal the deal. A record-equalling run of 27 unbeaten away games was scant consolation after Florian Wirtz missed a sitter to score the winner in stoppage time (which, in fairness, he brilliantly created for himself). Xabi Alonso defended his decision to use Wirtz only as a substitute after his 120 minutes against Köln. “I take full responsibility,” said the Spaniard.
  
  

• Hoffenheim must be thrilled with BVB’s struggles as they overshadow their own status as the league’s crisis club. Head coach Christian Ilzer has seen his team win one out of 10 Bundesliga games, also exiting the Pokal and Europe. The league is the main worry, though, now. They are just four points above the relegation playoff spot, and morale is on the floor. “If we play the way we did today,” warned Marius Bülter after the 4-0 home hammering by Union Berlin, “we won’t win another game this season.”