Mainz vs Hamburger preview - Labbadia not resting on laurels

Hamburg coach Bruno Labbadia says now is not the time for his side to catch their breath as they prepare for the four games which will define their future.

Labbadia leads his side to Mainz this Sunday buoyed by a victory over Augsburg last weekend which ended a five-game losing streak.

While those three points came as a huge relief to the northern Germany club, Labbadia has warned that they cannot think that they have already done their jobs with survival, after a permanence of 51 years and 251 days in the Bundesliga, still far from secure.

"Since Tuesday, we've been preparing for Mainz," Labbadia said. "We've still got to raise our game even further.

"Now is not the time for us to take a breather."

Labbadia was impressed by the result of his side's 3-2 win over Augsburg, but he was still not so convinced by their performance.

"It's still an enormous undertaking for us to win a game," he said. "When you hear somebody like Rafael van der Vaart saying after the game that he felt like he had just won the Bundesliga, then I think that is saying something.

"Things still aren't coming naturally to us."

At least Pierre-Michel Lasogga ended his own goalscoring drought with two goals against the Bavarians, and after he saved the club with a decisive goal in the relegation play-off last season, Labbadia hopes he can be decisive yet again this year.

"It was important for him that he was able to train without interruption for five or six weeks," Labbadia said. "And also that the team put him in a position to score."

"Now we want to go to Mainz to pick up more points."

Mainz coach Martin Schmidt has echoed Labbadia's views that now is not the time to take a breather, although that could change after Sunday if his side are then mathematically safe.

In that case, he says he has "the idea to want to blood one or two new players, while still wanting to remain competitive".

"We're not going to do any experimentation which could falsify the competition, though."

Schmidt should therefore still name his strongest side this Sunday, saying he "cannot have any sympathy" for Hamburg's plight.