VfL Bochum welcomes RB Leipzig on Saturday. Thomas Letsch made his debut in the first leg against the Saxons.

It was a bitter debut that Thomas Letsch experienced as coach of VfL Bochum last October.

His team lost 4-0 at RB Leipzig. “That was not a debut you would wish for,” recalls Letsch, before Bochum face Leipzig again, with the Saxons coming to the Ruhrstadion on Saturday (3.30pm, RS live ticker).

The coach looks back self-critically: “I made decisions back then that I wouldn’t make the same way again. We still had to be grateful that we only lost 0:4.” Among other things, Letsch had fielded a five-man backline. That went badly wrong – and the 54-year-old drew lessons from that, and since then has mostly relied on four defenders.

A lot has happened since the first Leipzig game. Letsch stabilised VfL, which was in a bad way at the time, led them back into the game, and allowed players like Christopher Antwi-Adjei to blossom. In the “Letsch table”, VfL is in eleventh place. The only thing he hasn’t been able to get to grips with is the flood of goals conceded (37, the worst figure with Hoffenheim and Gladbach).

“The VfL Bochum of that game has nothing to do with the VfL of today,” emphasises Letsch. At the reunion with Leipzig, “we can show that we have learned something. We will certainly present ourselves differently. “

And Letsch also has the first crisis with Bochum behind him. After four defeats in a row and falling to the bottom of the table, his team celebrated an important 2-0 victory at 1. FC Köln on Friday. The Castroper Straße breathed a sigh of relief.

“We had to put up with a lot of criticism, now there was more praise again. Of course, that’s more pleasant, especially if you can already score on Friday,” Letsch says about the past few days. But even in the previous derby defeat against Schalke (0:2), Letsch did not see everything negatively. “I am still of the opinion that things will go completely differently if we score the 1:0. That’s just football, the result counts.”

Thanks to the success in Cologne, Bochum jumped back up to 14th place and their rivals in the tight relegation battle all failed to pick up three points. “The matchday went well for us, but it’s only a snapshot.”

Because it could go down again as early as this weekend, with Bochum two points above the first relegation spot. “Of course, it would be ideal if we could take something against Leipzig for a good feeling during the international break,” said Letsch. (with gp)