Bayern have picked up just eight points from the first seven Bundesliga games of the season and are already 13 points adrift of the summit.

Butt was part of the Bayer Leverkusen team which, after finishing runners up in the league, the cup and in the 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 Bayern custodian.

"Those efforts and successes certainly played a role over the course of the season."

Bayern are in a similar situation with 13 members of their squad involved at the World Cup right up until the final weekend.

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 home clash with 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 11 points.

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