How does Castro even play for this club? Under no pressure he lobs a ball out or bound. Yarmolenko clearly nervous in his first match.
noted, but he still took Gotze out instead of Castro he sticks with the basics, this minimizes committing errors, and stays under the radar from the coach
ref never heard of advantage play i suppose, nevermind that elbow to LP face in peno box in injury time. with retarted refs liked that video playback is fuken useless
Unbelievable. Those arseholes in München must be laughing right now. TT took a squad that came 7th in the BL and managed to destroy clubs like Freiburg. Watzke is an idiot.
I don't think he commits enough to get taken off for PB to be considering it, or maybe it's reached that point; I guess we'll see in the CL.
Once Bartra and Schmelle went off the quality of crosses and long passes declined. Sokratis tried to earn a free kick and the play should have been allowed to continue whether there was or was no foul. We need Weigl back, his presence would stop Sokratis from needing to advance and playmake badly.
I am quite worried for this season. Bosz is looking like a poor mans Van Gaal. It's still early days, butt he preseason and the match today reminded me off the sterile modern day Ajax philiosophy. Lots of meaningless passing in dreary games that end goaless. Castro, Sahin and LP will never have the technical ability to make quick passes. They killed the momentum by always requiring at extra touch. They need to be replaced with Weigl, Dahoud and Toljan immediately. Pulisic is the real deal, but not yet and was never going to be good enough to replace Dembele. Let's see what Yarmolenko can do, but a world class talent needed to be brought to replace Dembele. We will miss the Frenchman greatly. Philipp was a decent understudy for Reus, but he is not ready to be starting from Dortmund either. I said beforehand that the Freiburg and Tottenham game will give us a true indication of the season and it does not look pretty. It will probably be a top 4 finish and a Eurpa League quarter final.
That is quite pessimistic, Yarmolenko and Pulisic played two full international fixtures over the break and looked the part. Bosz should be starting Dahoud over Castro if he learned anything from today's game.
It's not just based on today. I've seen Yarmolenko with the Ukraine and quite few times with Kiev. He is good, but never thought he was a world class talent let alone now he is 28. I will reserve judgement for us until I have seen more, but the way Ukranian players have adapted does not feel me with confidence. Pulisic is a kid and not ready to be the star player for Dortmund. There are reasons why Dembele is the 2nd most expensive player of all time, and not just because Barcelona were desperate for a Neymar replacement.
3rd most expensive player. Pisczek was poor, maybe the weakest point, but the whole bunch played like with sirup in their pants. Looking forward to rating...
To be frank Gotze had a good game...made multiple key passes which players of quality like Muller, Werner would have buried...
Eaglespark I agree with you on both players especially Yarm, but Pulisic is only 18 and it is unfair to compare him to Dembele. Dembele himself was still very inconsistent, he is not the second or third most expensive player based on purely merit. Qatari financial doping has a lot to do with it, Mbappe is one of the most expensive players just six months after his debut. Come on though, Europa? A goalless draw away to ten man Freiburg is bad but Real Madrid has two score draws at home and Benzema is injured. Tottenham look shit at Wembley. Bosz having some teething pains as the new BVB coach does not mean the season is over. We have been spoilt by Tuchel and Klopp.
Madrid have a player called Ronaldo who will be back for the CL and back in 2 games. Reus on the other hand won't be back and probably won't be fully fit until next season. I hope people don't get me wrong about Pulisic. He is a world class talent and could potentially one day be one of the best in the world in his position, but as you said he is 18. At best we shouldn't want to rely on him until he is 21. Not even Messi was a regular match winner at Barca until he was 21. Tottenham looked good against Chelsea. We can't rely on Tottenham playing poorly. They have a settled squad under a manager who has been there for a while. If we had a fully fit team with Reus, Raphael and Weigl all fit, then we would be favourites to come ahead of them in the group. As things stand I don't see it.
Tottenham will be missing a couple of key players due to injury and suspension. Like Madrid they will not put all their men behind the ball. Tuchel and Klopp also had problems with parked buses. Today was unfortunate because we lost two subs to injury and Freiburg was forced to park early because of the red. If Freiburg applied their usual attacking philosophy it would be much easier to score. What Bosz can be faulted for is not making an earlier substitution and bringing the wrong substitutes on. Zagadou and Yarmolenko have no business coming on.
Thomas Tuchel rarely had problems with parked buses. Maybe in the beginning of his 2nd season when Miki and Hummels left but afterwards he had a stellar run up until the bus attack when the players simply weren't themselves.
Midway in Tuchel's second season the deep defending and counterattacks of Köln, Augsburg and Hertha frustrated us. Benfica first leg. Darmstadt away was the worst. Who cares maybe we remember it differently, Bayern is losing!
Tuchel had other problems like half the squad hating him, constantly changing the lineup to look smart and playing baffling formations. There were many games where the attack lacked cohesion, but the team were bailed out by Dembele or Reus. It's good that Bayern dropped more points than us, but the problems remain. I only hope that Bosz is being a smart manager when it comes to Castro/Dahoud and LP/Toljan. He is new in the job and is probably trying to keep the old guard happy, but will eventually bring in the younger better players.
My ratings: Burki 7: He didn't have much to do but when he did, he was stellar. Piszczek 4: His attacking fluency is gone even though he might have a couple of highlights in a season. Against more attacking opposition his defensive frailties will show. Sokratis 5: He was good defensively, but offensively rather poor. Hard to blame him though. Bartra 6: If we had him instead of Toprak, we might have had more chances going forward considering he likes to venture ahead with the ball. Toprak 6: Has no offensive upside but was decent defensively. Schmelzer 7: I thought he was pretty good. Too bad the attempt to injure has him out for an indefinite period. Nuri 6: He looked gassed by the 2nd half. He's been playing and travelling every couple of days. He should have stayed home. Castro 3: What is this guy even doing at Borussia Dortmund? He had 1 good cross and a couple of diagonal forward passes and that was it. Lost balls, no creativity, aimless running without the ball. He takes corners with no aim. DAZ 6: I thought he was fine but offered little offensively. Clearly he's not going to tear a hole through a parked bus like Raphael Gurreiro. Max 4: Rather poor. Lots of good running but I don't see him offering much more than Schurrle after 3 games. PEA 5: Maybe that knock early in the game slowed him down but he was always late with the tap-in. Not at all clinical today. Gotze 7: Likely the best creative force today. While we won't notice it match to match, we will notice a trend where he's improving and we are all better off because of that. Let's not forget that he was once slated to be the best BVB player ever. Pulisic 5: Maybe too much is heaped on this kid. Jadon played with the 2nd team so it's likely that Pulisic will be a stalwart on the right. Yarmalenko 4: I have no clue why we bought him and he likely had no clue what to do out there considering we had Kagawa and Dahoud as creators to break down Freiburg. But it's his first game. We are sooooooo incredibly lucky to escape this weekend in top spot. Bayern played quite well but Hoffenheim has somehow improved despite losing Firmino, Volland, Sule, Rudy and Toljan these past 3 summers. Incredible coaching by Julian N.