Borussia Dortmund sunk to another dire defeat on Wednesday night, falling 1-0 at home to Augsburg in one of their worst performances of a miserable season.Anyone watching BVB play for the first time would not have guessed that their squad contained four World Cup winners and that the proud Ruhr side had won their Champions League group just a couple months ago. Yet that is the reality they face. And now the international media is abuzz about what is going wrong at the Signal-Iduna Park.Football fans and pundits often turn to tactics when things go wrong, but sometimes a chalkboard can't explain a result or even a string thereof. A team may play the game of their lives, but if they are unable to finish on an abundance of chances created and are beaten by a 35-yard wonder-goal, it's not a tactical defeat.In Dortmund's case, their downfall is hardly a matter of tactics. When your record signing has the Bundesliga's worst conversion rate (Henrikh Mkhitaryan has zero goals from 35 shots this season), it's not tactics that need to be addressed. When a former Bundesliga Player of the Season can hardly string together two passes (Nuri Sahin completed just 48.72 percent of his passes against Leverkusen, per the official Bundesliga liveticker), there's a deeper problem that no chalkboard analysis can solve.Fundamentally, Dortmund's problem now is no different from what they faced in the fall of 2011. It's just to a far greater degree and rather inexplicable considering how far the club and its players have come in the years since.In the fall of 2011, BVB were the darlings of Europe, back in the Champions League for the first time in nearly a decade after shocking the mighty Bayern Munich by winning the Bundesliga by a seven-point margin and with a young and previously unproven squad.They were drawn into Group F alongside modest Olympiacos and Marseille as well as a beatable Arsenal. They were favorites to win the group. Yet Dortmund were utter failures, taking just four points from six group-stage games and being knocked out of all European competitions as a result.There is something to be said about the fact that BVB played without the departed Sahin, and at the time Robert Lewandowski was just beginning to assert himself as starter after an injury to Lucas Barrios left him as the only viable center forward in Jurgen Klopp's team. These perhaps were triggers that tipped the balance toward disaster.Dortmund played well in their opener against Arsenal, but without a proven striker, were unable to finish and only salvaged a point through a late Ivan Perisic volley. The collapse came in their second game, against Marseille. Andre Ayew scored a shock opener early on, and in a new and intimidating position at the Stade Velodrome, BVB fell apart. They would go on to lose 3-0 and ended the matchday three points behind Arsenal and five behind Marseille.After two matches, they were already against the ropes. And things wouldn't get any better.The burden of expectation was too much for Dortmund in 2011, and at the time, perhaps a group like the one they faced a year later would have been one in which they would have achieved more. The following year, they faced the Spanish, English and Dutch champions in Real Madrid, Manchester City and Ajax, and were expected to manage no better than third place. They would win the group in stunning fashion and, despite struggling at times against a Malaga side they were expected to beat, eventually reached the final.It would seem that reaching the Champions League final and seeing four players crowned World Cup winners since their horrible 2011 group-stage exit would put Dortmund's nerves behind them, but apparently that is one area in which Klopp's men are still lacking.As in 2011, BVB began this season with some problems that served as triggers. As in 2011, they began the season without the star striker upon whom they had so heavily relied to shoulder the burden of scoring the necessary goals. Their two best ball-playing central midfielders (Sahin and Ilkay Gundogan) missed most of the fall campaign with injuries, and their two best players (Marco Reus and Mats Hummels) missed 14 and 12 games, respectively.All these triggers set the table for a collapse, and what we've seen in recent months is the football club equivalent of a complete mental breakdown.Experienced, international-class players began to make routine mistakes, and the goals began to rain in. Dortmund conceded 26 goals in the first round, more than in the entirety of each of their title-winning campaigns in 2010-11 and 2011-12.With the ball, BVB were horribly wasteful. In the absence of Reus, Ciro Immobile was unable to step up as Lewandowski once had. Mkhitaryan, who had crumbled under pressure the previous season, reached even lower lows, and the crisis spiraled out of control.Looking around the squad, there apparently is no savior. Klopp brought a healthy team back from winter training, yet we've only seen more of the same: In two games since the winter break, BVB have shown at least a slight improvement at the back, conceding "just" once. But on the ball and in attack, they remain in a complete shambles.The onus on a team like BVB is to win, and that requires scoring goals that have no source at present. The burden of expectation is now weighing so heavily that they can't hit the target against even the Bundesliga's lesser teams.In ordinary circumstances, Dortmund's situation would call for the head coach to be sacked immediately. Yet now, it's hard to see how a managerial change would have a positive effect. The main problem isn't Klopp's tactics, nor is it that the players no longer believe in him.On the contrary, the players' respect for their trainer and desire to fight for his job may actually be further crippling them as they face yet even greater expectations. In December, Mkhitaryan intimated to Bild (h/t Goal.com) that it pained him to see Klopp in such a state. "He's always there for us, and it is all the more frustrating that we are not able to make him happy by winning again," he said.Hummels hit the nail on the head last month when he opined to Welt am Sonntag (h/t Goal.com) that his side were "wasting [their] potential" and that a few bad results had begun to weigh heavily on the club, creating a bit of a mental block.Incredibly, the factors that played the biggest roles in their success have turned on them. Klopp once was able to motivate players like32-year-old Oliver Kirch to outplay world-class stars like Xabi Alonso in the Champions League. He turned ordinary individuals like Kirch, Marcel Schmelzer, Kevin Grosskreutz, Erik Durm and Sven Bender into fully functional, quality players who fit perfectly into his system.Now his team is perhaps fighting too hard, trying to force success and making too many silly mistakes in the process.Dortmund's famous fan support, which drew the highest attendance in Europe even before they had reached the big stage and spurred the team on in good times, has also become a hindrance. The players know they're obligated to such dedicated fans, not only to play their hardest but to deliver and give them something to believe in.This is true for every struggling club, but at BVB, where "Echte Liebe" (true love) is the mantra and attendance hardly faltered even in their darkest of times in the mid-2000s, the obligation and indeed burden is even stronger. Evidence thereof can be found in captains Hummels and Roman Weidenfeller approaching the famous "Gelbe Wand" (Yellow Wall) after Wednesday's match to console their fans.There are some areas where Klopp should be faulted. Although understandable considering he never had much room for error in squad experimentation and always had limited personnel resources even with a full squad, he never created tactical flexibility in his system to overcome the hurdles required to adapt to a change such as replacing Lewandowski with Immobile.And although able to motivate many among his team to play "above" themselves, Klopp never fully erased the insecurities and fragility that first became apparent in late 2011.With that being said, it's hard to see any way out of Dortmund's mess. Sacking Klopp would perhaps relieve the stress of playing for the trainer's job, but that's only the very beginning. Tactical changes wouldn't erase the individual errors and switching to, for example, a possession system when players like Sahin are in dreadful passing form and there is no striker who can be relied upon to break down stubborn, deep-sitting defenses can't be seen as productive.Sadly, it looks as though the only way Dortmund can claw their way out of their current mess is if the players look within themselves and find the confidence that once made them champions. It's a tall order that becomes an even greater ask with each passing week, but Dortmund's status as a Bundesliga club depends on it.Follow Clark Whitney on Twitter
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