Hertha Berlin coach Lucien Favre has been given a vote of confidence by the club despite their poor start.

A 4-0 defeat at home to Freiburg yesterday was the Old Lady's fifth successive reverse and has left them looking up at the rest of the table.

Yet Hertha insist Favre will not become the second coaching casualty in the top flight after Marcel Koller left his post with Bochum yesterday.

"Just to make things clear: Lucien Favre has been in Berlin for two years, he has worked fantastically and he is also the right coach for the current situation," said the club's general manager Michael Preetz.

The defeat to Freiburg was the latest in a series of worrying results for a club which finished fourth last season and was still in the hunt for the title with two games to go.

Favre cannot explain his side's slump, but accepted his share of the responsibility.

"That was a very big disappointment," he said. "We have forgotten the basics. We ran too little, fought too little and forgot to defend.

"We are all to blame, and that includes me. We are going to have to work a lot harder and only then can we get ourselves out of this situation."

Hertha will be desperate to turn around their fortunes when they travel to second-division side 1860 Munich in the second round of the DFB-Pokal in midweek.