Blessin's first match? A derby loss

There is no gentle way into this job, and Blessin didn't get one. Mönchengladbach's return from a three-week break in the fixture schedule was always going to be a test of where the squad's head was at. Instead it became a full derby against Köln, the one result the Bökelberg faithful least wanted to lose, and lose it they did.

El Mala's goal was enough to settle it. For a Gladbach side already stretched thin by injuries before Blessin had even taken his first training session, a defeat to the club's fiercest rivals is about the worst possible way to open a managerial tenure. There's no easing into a job like this when the derby is first up.

A rebuild that starts in a hole

Blessin inherits a squad that was struggling before he walked through the door, and this result doesn't change that. What it does is put an immediate number on the scale of the job: a new manager, an injury list that hasn't been detailed in full but is clearly biting, and now a derby defeat to sit with for however long the next fixture takes to arrive.

None of this is fatal on its own in football terms. Managers lose first games all the time, and derbies have a habit of punishing whichever side is least settled on the day. But Blessin didn't get the luxury of a soft opener to find his feet, and Köln, through El Mala, made sure of that.

The next fixture

The pressure that comes with any new managerial appointment at a club in trouble doesn't wait for a settling-in period, and a derby loss to Köln guarantees that Blessin's early weeks will be read through that result. Gladbach's injury situation isn't going to clear up overnight, and whatever shape Blessin wants to build will have to be assembled around absences rather than in spite of a clean bill of health.

The margins in this kind of rivalry fixture are often thin anyway. El Mala's goal was the difference, and for Blessin, the job now is turning a bad start into something that doesn't define the season before it's properly begun.