Bayern Munich goalkeeper Hans-Jorg Butt fears history could repeat itself if his side does not start winning soon. The Bavarian giants have picked up just eight points from their first seven Bundesliga games and are already 13 points off the pace.

Butt was part of the Bayer Leverkusen team which, after finishing runners-up in the league, the DFB-Pokal and the UEFA Champions League in 2002, only just avoided relegation the following season, and he can already see parallels between the two situations.

"Not only were we in the Champions League final with Leverkusen, but we also had very many players in the summer of 2002 at the World Cup," recalled the 36-year-old Bayern custodian. "Those efforts and successes certainly played a role over the course of the season."

We have reached the point where we have got to win in the Bundesliga, we have got to. We have got to find solutions and find them quickly.
Hans-Jorg Butt of Bayern Munich

Bayern are in a similar situation with 13 members of their squad involved at the 2010 FIFA World Cup South Africa™ right up until its penultimate day, when Germany edged Uruguay in the match for third place. That has left them short of an ideal physical condition, but Butt has warned that they can have no more excuses, starting with next weekend's visit of Hannover.

"We have reached the point where we have got to win in the Bundesliga, we have got to," he told the Bild am Sonntag newspaper. "We have got to find solutions and find them quickly. The situation is dramatic."

Bayern made a similarly bad start to the season last year, but they were never more than eight points adrift of the summit and at the same stage of the campaign as now, they had three more points.

However, the situation could easily have been worse. Last-minute winners from Bastian Schweinsteiger and Daniel van Buyten saw them steal unexpected victories over Wolfsburg and Hoffenheim when draws would have left them inside the bottom three now.