Rummenigge sets Bayern 10-point target

Bayern Munich chairman Karl-Heinz Rummenigge has set the defending champions a target of 10 points from their next four league games as they look to close the 14-point gap to leaders Dortmund.

Despite reaching the last 16 of the Champions League, Bayern have failed to impress in the Bundesliga this season and currently sit eighth in the league.

With four league games left until the winter break, Rummenigge says he wants at least 10 points before the Bundesliga pauses for Christmas.

“Four games, ten points: that’s no small amount,” Rummenigge said after his side lost 3-2 at AS Roma in the Champions League on Tuesday.

“We need to do it and we want to achieve that target.”

While Rummenigge addressed his comments to the squad, the message is also clear to coach Louis van Gaal, whose relationship with Bayern’s hierarchy is becoming increasingly strained: start winning more league games.

President Uli Hoeness produced the most barbed comments on Sky television at the start of the month when he said van Gaal was difficult to work with.

“I think it is difficult to talk to him,” said the Bayern president.

“He does not accept other peoples’ opinions.”

Since then, van Gaal has criticised French playmaker Franck Ribery in the German press for a below-par performance in a friendly game and the France star responded by saying he wished the coach had spoken to him in private.

Bayern’s director of sport Christian Nerlinger then reprimanded van Gaal for going public on the matter and said his comments are not giving a ‘good impression’ of the Munich side at the moment.

And van Gaal’s comments that Bayern should sell star Bastian Schweinsteiger at the end of the season, unless he signs an extension to his contract, also drew criticism from the club’s senior figures.

The Dutchman has a contract at Bayern until 2012 and signed a year’s extension in September.