Dortmund need time to settle – Klopp

Borussia Dortmund coach Jurgen Klopp has warned his new-look team need time to gel fully.

After losing Robert Lewandowski to Bayern Munich, Klopp added firepower to his squad in the shape of Adrian Ramos, Shinji Kagawa, Ji Dong-won and Ciro Immobile – as well as signing defender Matthias Ginter and securing a permanent return for playmaker Nuri Sahin.

A season-opening 2-0 loss to Bayer Leverkusen went a long way to proving Klopp’s point, but signs look better after a 3-2 win over Augsburg before the international break.

Immobile is set to shake off an injury in order to lead the line against Freiburg on Saturday and Klopp picked last season’s Serie A top-scorer as a perfect example of where improvements can still be made by his team.

Klopp said of the Italy striker: “He’s a real goalscorer.

“He scored a nice goal [against Netherlands last Thursday] and that will be good for him. But our only problem is the pace in which developments obviously have to happen in football.

“You always get asked about a new player in a new club after a really short time of being able to train together, that’s our only problem. Everything else is fine.

“I hope that in three years we’ll look back and no one remembers the first five or six games. He needs time to integrate in this team; we need time to develop our team play.

“Now we could have had the time for it, but now Marco Reus is injured.

“Of course we’ve got Shinji Kagawa as well but he hasn’t played with the team yet.

“Everything is far from perfect but we’ve got to stabilize our game while we collect results. Most likely we have to do that with a new player in the starting line-up who will have to reclaim his self-assurance as well.

“That will be hard. When Ciro came back he seemed very relaxed, I think he was very glad his injury wasn’t as bad as feared. The bruise hurts a lot at the beginning but it heals quite fast.”