Obviously, he had some good moments but he looks to me as a left forward/winger and no, we never had any control in the midfield at any time. On your second statement, it's like you were in hiding when some were lambasting Kagawa on the forum.
That doesn't negate the fact that he played as a winger instead of a no 8. His positional discipline was abysmal.
What are you on about? Kagawa didn't play?? Even getting criticised on the bench. Did we not comfortably finish second last year with him in the team regularly. Subs were poor today. Guerreiro was poor. Gotze made absolutely no difference.
We do know that he deserves a chance. I mean we pick up a LB and let him play in CM but we won't let a CM play in CM?!? This is down to TT. Bizarre.
I really want to see the following line-up. I believe it provides stability/flexibility and puts players in position of strength. Passlack - Papa - Merino - MS ------------- Weigl------------------------ -------------------------RG----------------- - Schurrle ---- Gotze --- Reus -- ---------------------Auba----------------- The more I see RG, the more I see him as an AM rather than LB. He has great awareness, and is willing to take risks. Having a combo of Passlack/Schurrle allows Passlack to bomb forward while having some defensive coverage from AS. Dembele can be rotated in to provide more attacking threat (even centrally if needed). Gotze/Kagawa can interchange, and Merino/Ginter/Bartra can rotate as needed.
The winter break was a good time for TT to finally see the error in many of his ways. Alas, he is quite incessant on continuing with his bizarre decisions. RG has the potential to be a world class LB, top 3 maybe. In spite of his technical qualities, he cannot properly adhere to the clear lack of a №8 and playing him in that role week in-week out will not change a thing regarding that shortcoming. Quality left backs are a rarity in today's game. Let RG play there and develop into the beast he can truly become. Hats off to Marcel for his drive, attitude and energy but he is simply outclassed here. LP is clearly past his best form. Inevitable really, age catches up with everyone. The future is definitely with Passlack and the kid should be first choice for the right back spot. LP can come on for his experience, but his appearances should be limited to that. TT did a right thing vetoing Merino's move, but what is the point really if he is not willing to give him a proper run of games? Castro has been abysmal, Gotze is no good playing deep, Kagawa is ill suited to that role as well. Sahin doesn't seem to be in the picture, so why not give Merino the chance? We are sorely lacking a №8 and Castro in not cutting it. The break was a perfect chance to try out a Weigl/Merino partnership. Again a wasted opportunity. A frustrating game today. The luck that saved us with Bremen was not present today. We are playing very poorly, as if a club fighting for the 6-7th spots. Things need to change and fast. Tuchel needs to get his act together. Constant changes in formation and personnel are hurting the team and the overall performance. These antics and his bad business on the transfer market are issues that Tuchel clearly needs to think about (management too), because his only saving grace this season has been winning our CL group. If we take that out the season has been uninspiring at best.
Tuchel said today in the pressekonferenz that Merino has developed really well and is close to playing with the first team. The why the f uck isn't he playing?
Dortmund have easily got enough quality players in the squad to be doing much, much better. To be 11 points behind RB, below Frankfurt and level on points with Hoffenheim after 18 matches is massive under achievement given the comparative resources and players available. Doing well in the CL is very nice, but it means little if the league campaign is a clusterf*ck. Finishing a distant third or fourth, with easily one of the top 2 squads in the BL imo one capable of challenging for the title, is so poor it's almost a sackable offence imo. Anything worse then even that, which is still very possible, is a complete disaster. Tuchel must be under pressure soon.
It is now very clear, that some huge fails have been made in the past transfer window from your FO. BVB´s defence is one big cluster********, and Tuchel´s endless rotation will not help afterall. If you don´t get your act together very soon, I am not sure Dortmund will finish within the Top 4 and with that, I am also certain that some players (namely Auba, Reus and Sokratis) will consider transfers in the summer. There really is some weird downward spiral going on in Dortmund. What I´ve always respected about your club, was the ability to recompensate the loss of your top players. The whole transfer strategy these days makes absolutely no sense to me. The Club keeps buying these young talents, which is great, but only seem to focus on the offense really and slowly developes into some sort of "Premium youth developement" Club for the Top Teams. This, plus the very obvious latent issues with Tuchel really seem to end up beeing a huge problem for you guys.
I don't think the players as a group are as bad as they appear. Apart from the top players, I refuse to believe that Bartra, Götze, Ginter, Passlack, Merino and Sahin are so bad that they cannot crack into the lineup and play 90 min regularly. It's hard to judge TT over the course of two vastly differing years but we have to think practically here. We've missed the CL once already and cannot afford to do so once again. Also another rebuild is extremely costly in terms of growth. We should be looking at trainers across Europe.
After having watched the game yesterday, I have to conclude it was an immensely sad performance. Towards the end of 1st half I almost fell asleep! I can't even remember last good game. What the f... is going on? In the second half it looked like TT wanted to defend the result, but defending when we are one goal ahead seldom pays. One can do it agains Bayern or other strong teams, but not Mainz or Bremen Saw Leverkusen vs Mönchengladbach on Saturday, it was completely different match, a performance at it's best. Both of them would beat us easily. With this stationary play, we'll won't make top 4. There's something completely wrong with the system we play. It is too abvious, too easy to read for the opponent. I have previously claimed that the coach has to do some alternations during the break, when they perform so bad, but it never happens. And, with this play Auba is wasted, he only runs in between, Schürle on top might be just as good, or as I said before, even Ramos (too late for him). I've seen one of the training matches during the winter break, think it was againt Liege. Not any good game that either, but there were several long balls behind defense to Schürle. Most of them enden by offside, but an interesting attempt. So why, in games like yesterday, dosn't TT go for something similar, just for a change? Auba would for sure benefit of that, to get more running balls. Last but not least, our defence sucks. Only Papa keeps good standard. To my opinion we have to buy one even better than him (Papa is probably not the right leader and Toprak won't redeem the situation), and play with Passlack/Ginter and Durm/Guerreiro on the sides (like several others i prefere Guerreiro playing in the midfield). If it continues like this, I'll have to find me a new club. With this, I'll only ruin my weekends!
Hard to deny that lower league clubs have more real supporters and the top clubs have more fair weather fans. kicker rated Castro's divisive performance as the best (2.50) in yesterday's game. http://www.kicker.de/news/fussball/...8/borussia-dortmund-17/topspieler-verein.html
Nobody should take kicker ratings seriously. It's unscientific, subjective and congruent to the rater's mood swings. if rater didn't get sex last night, he'd likely take it out on whichever player his wife is fantasizing about.