Our first home match of the year against the toughest opponent possible RB Leipzig. The pessimist in me says this has RB Leipzig Win written all over it seeing as we haven't improved since the winter break. RBL will be without Diego Demme, Marcel Sabitzer and Timo Werner (flu) and Emil Forsberg (suspended), however they still have their best player Naby Keïta which means they are still a very dangerous threat and I think the key to beating them is to mark Keïta out of the game. Here's the possible line-ups according to BVB: I must say I like this line-up very much with Castro finally being dropped.
Replace Piszczek with Passlack, and give Don Merino a start over Ginter and you have a great line-up! [emoji106]
I honestly expect Castro to pop up in the starting XI tonight. Other than that - Passlack should be ahead of Piszczek, RG should be playing at LB and Weigl should be playing with Merino in the centre. Dembele ahead of Schurrle too...
Yup TT with all his formation combos should be able to swap out Ginter and Schürrle for Dembélé and Merino. I absolutely do not want to see Castro and Rode on the pitch this evening. Underperformance is forgivable and requires patience but incompetence and lack of effort needs to be tossed out.
Tuchel starts 4 fullbacks. BVB: Bürki, Bartra, Dembélé, Reus, Guerreiro, Aubameyang, Sokratis, Schmelzer, Weigl, Durm, Piszczek #bvbrbl pic.twitter.com/h0EEbr2ZKZ— Borussia Dortmund (@BVB) February 4, 2017
Starting XI: Bürki - Piszczek, Sokratis, Bartra, Schmelzer - Weigl - Durm, Dembélé, Guerreiro, Reus - Aubameyang. Subs: Weidenfeller, Ginter, Götze, Schürrle, Pulisic, Kagawa, Passlack. Castro not even on the bench, awsome!
What a bizarre selection. I assume the midfield would look like: Reus---RG---Durm---Dembele --Weigl-- I am at a loss of words. The only player here, whose natural position is a central one is Weigl.....
Tuchel just said Castro is not in the team because he wasn't fit, meaning if Castro was fit he would have totally played today. Seriously WTF is wrong with Tuchel? I'm starting to think he's actively trying to sabotage the club.
It's remarkable that the projected lineups here or on other sites like Kicker often look better than the actual team that enters the field. We have to trust what the coach sees in the training sessions I guess. This is either a matchday when we make up some ground on the first two or lose ground in comparison to the teams around us who all won. If we cannot beat a Leipzig without a couple of their top performers, then we deserve to be where we are right now.
Most (if not all) of Leipzig's attacks are through Piszczek. We are very shaky in defence, if that is a surprise..
We start Durm on the wing when we have Pulisic, Gotze, Kagawa, and Schurrle all on the bench. Absolutely bizarre.