Borussia Dortmund put their Bundesliga woes aside to beat St Pauli 3-0 in the second round of the DFB-Pokal in Hamburg tonight.
Jurgen Klopp's side went into the clash at the Millerntor-Stadion on the back of four successive league defeats, leaving the German giants 15th in the table.
However, they managed to shelve those disappointments for the time being with a comfortable win over a side who occupy the relegation playoff spot in the second tier.
Despite the disparity in quality, Klopp took no chances and named a strong team as Marco Reus, Shinji Kagawa, Henrikh Mkhitaryan and Ciro Immobile all lined up for the visitors.
It was another of Dortmund's big-name inclusions that went closest to opening the scoring, however, when defender Mats Hummels forced Philipp Tschauner into a fine finger-tip save early on.
Last season's beaten finalists continued to toil in the final third and should have moved ahead after Immobile had a goal wrongly disallowed for offside. Their persistence soon paid off when Immobile latched on to Kagawa's scuffed effort to tap home the opener on 33 minutes.
Despite posting little threat to Dortmund's rearguard, St Pauli did manage to threaten when goalkeeper Mitchell Langerak pushed away Soren Gonther's bullet header from a corner.
It proved a decisive moment as Dortmund doubled their advantage shortly before the break, as Immobile turned provider to cut back for Reus to side-foot past Tschauner.
St Pauli asked better questions of their visitors' defence early in the second half, with Dennis Daube squeezing between a few defenders to fire at goal but Langerak punched clear.
Klopp's men weathered a brief storm of pressure from the hosts before putting the game beyond doubt on 86 minutes, as Kagawa capitalised on a hashed clearance from Tschauner to casually slot home a third.
Shane Callaghan
