Dominant first half. At times, Wolfsburg looked like a relegation team again. Kuba is out injured, Didavi is very fragile. Such a display looks more like a repeat of last year and not a return to Europe.
Honestly really good. Gotze looked better than I've seen in a long time, pulisic looked very dangerous
Wolfsburg with the “We still have enough time, let Dortmund have the ball. Oh we just conceded again.“ tactic.
Sahin seemed to have twisted is knee there. I thought he was done for but he got up. So far total domination. Pulisic may make us forget about Dembele sooner then later. He's having a great game and though Gotze was good as well.
Wow, Arnold with an intentional elbow against Sahin. Didn't fully hit him but still wrong not to give any card for that.
Good performance overall, how a useless player like Castro has managed to covince Bosz he has a place in the team is beyond me. 3 points and a clean sheet. Flawless.
So far it's been the same with Klopp, Tuchel, and Bosz regarding Castro. Either all three see something in him that we don't or he's a training warrior where he leaves you no other option than to play him.
My ratings: PEA 7: He's adapting faster than expected to the change in style. Drops deeper but his hold up play is awful. Clinical as usual though. Max 6: Not bad. He's slowly gelling with the team. Pulisic 8: Excellent performance for his age. Gotze 7: Still has ways to go to recover the form prior to 2014 but impressive nonetheless. Needs to play more centrally. 4-2-3-1 suits him better. Castro 4: Invisible. A ton of back passes. However, no mistakes. Sahin 6: Not bad despite his lack of speed Sokratis 7: Kept their WOB attack under control Bartra 9: Had more forward penetrating passes than Castro. Beautiful goal. Lukasz 7: Thwarted quite a few attacking endeavours from WOB Zagadou 8: What a truck in defence. Very impressive performance. Burki 6: Didn't have much to do but kept the ball out when called upon Mo 7: Positioning was remarkable. Knows how to get past the opposition. Can't wait to see him with a few more matches behind him and Weigl next to him. Kagawa 5: Not enough min to show his class Passlack 5: Did just about enough to be a decent sub for Zagadou PB 8: His tactics were excellent given our performance during the friendlies, so many injuries and newcomers. Let's not forget this is WOB. A stern test awaits at home against Hertha.
good rating! Zagadou and also LP were great, and of course Bartra. Though, when it comes to rating Castro and Dahoud, I can still apply what I said after the cup game. By hate I didn't mean Castro as a person, but Castro on the pitch. To be sure I watched the game once more, and saw that they were more less equal... Good performance today (by the whole team), but the intensity slowed down after 3:0. Was it becouse of Dahoud instead of Gøtze? Was expecting to see Mor in the last 20 min, just to add some speed. WOB was weak. Saw Leverkusen yesterday, that was something else!
Castro is not as bad as you're singling him out to be. Wolfsburg were shit so he had the freedom to roam and spray a few nicely weighted passes without being caught out of position or dispossessed. We will play many teams similar to Wolfsburg or worse so he will be useful.
Castro is a decent worker. He's not bad positionally but he isn't intelligent either. What he lacks is ambition with the ball. On top of that he has an awful first touch and is disposed easily. In tight spaces he's clueless. Usually when presented with options, he may not make the bad one but almost always the safest one. Hence, he isn't BVB quality. It doesn't help that I watch B04 where Kampl looks significantly superior, especially defensively. Just watch Gundogan, Dahoud and Weigl. And you'll notice the difference in quality immediately.
This may be a minority view but I think the team plays better without Dembele. He has talent but he also is not big on combination play which is the big strength of BVB. I have only started really watching BVB when Pulisic joined but I am interested in the opinions of longtime BVB fans.
I considered this today. I think we are blessed with so much quality in the final third that we are perhaps one of the only teams in the world that this might be the case. But it will ultimately depend how well the offense developers its chemistry together (today was a great start), and how well Pulisic continues to play. Dembeles chemistry with Auba probably lead to at least half of our goals last season. The good news about that is they didn't take long to develope that chemistry and maybe Puli/Philip can develope something similar with him. But even with dembeles selfishness, he made some passes that were just absurd and entirely due to his skill. In keeping emre mor we will have another young player who likes to dribble like him, but mor is rawer. Im at the point where I don't want him here anymore. I don have a tone of ill will towards him, he's just a kid, but he doesn't have a place on this team and if we can get 120 mil for him that can go a long way. On the topic of a dembele sale like that... If we really do bring in 100 mill + (there's a 25% sell on fee due to Rennes) I would almost prefer to see us use half of that money to bolster our wage structure for the coming years. Really I don't see us replacing him instantly this transfer window so that money will be saved regardless, that's just the way I would spend it.
My biggest issue with Castro is inconcistency. He's had some truly special plays (some nice shots from far out, that backheel flick to Auba, etc.) but for every one of those, he loses possession easily or completely wastes a shot from outside of the box. He always works hard and he's serviceable, but I definitely would agree that he's not starting quality for a team like us. He's a perfectly fine piece off the bench who may play a ton of minutes in a season( he seems a solid leader) but he's not a starting midfielder for a CL club
We shouldn't draw too many conclusions after a game against a Wolfsburg team that is still finding itself having a bad day. Against a better opponent, Dembele's runs to free up space or passes into runs of his teammates are vital to break deadlocks. The way he energized our attack last year proved his importance. The negative influences on the game and the team chemistry have to be very high to argue that a team gets better when you take out a player with his abilities. That wasn't even close to being the case last season when we clearly weren't better without him. He might not be a perfect fit for our combination game and he isn't suited to play triangles, but besides wrecking defenses, he does fit other parts of our game perfectly like counterattacking.
Missed the game - my apologies went skydiving. Sounds like we played well The two things that excite me the most in reading are Goetze and Barta.