English weeks, one must love them

Man, I love the so called "English weeks", you just get to see our boys playing on the field so many times and right now I can't get enough of them. After the dominating victory against Arsenal and a game that was and I quote: "A close to perfect game" (S. Kehl), we are now facing Mainz. This won't be any easy game as well. Even though Mainz really had their difficulties pre-season, losing first round in the DFB-Pokal, losing against Asteras Tripolis in the Europe League Qualifier and they only barely managed to play 2 draws against Paderborn and Hannover, it seemed like the team couldn't manage to adapt to the new coach and compensate all the players leaving. However the win against Hertha showed that the team is alive and can play decent football. And after all it is not like we don't have our own problem at hand.

Kehl was injured in the first half against Arsenal and has now problems with the adductors muscles. He will most likely we replaced by Jojic. Piszczek is still trying to get rid of his muscular problems and Hummels as well as Gündogan still need some time to make it on the field. Jesus, I already feel Goose bumps when I think of Ilkay back on the field, playing in our jersey. Klopp mentioned that he will nominate some U23-Players as back-ups for our starting eleven. It is still not clear if Kagawa will play. If he should not make it we will most likely see the same starting formation that we had against Arsenal. On top of all the intense game on Tuesday is most likely still in the bones of the players since Klopp can't make much changes, if any and we saw the best pressing of our boys thus far in this season which means the most run kilometers as well.

However the players are used to this intense kind of play and showed many many times that they are capable of handling these situations. After all in their second year Aubameyang and Mkhitaryan showed how much potential they have and are valuable assets to the team. As a side note, Jonas Hofmann was transfered for 1 year to Mainz to gain match experience and it is very likely that he will play against us in this game, let's hope that he won't be as good tomorrow in a red jersey as he used to be in black and yellow.

There is not much left to say about this game or the opponent or about us. It's the third game of the Bundesliga-season, we gradually managed to boost our form and play, both teams will try their best to win this game and so we are in for a great game.

Statistics:

- Mainz lost the last 6 Games against BVB. The last victory for Mainz is dated on the 10th of April 2010 (1:0)

- Mainz only lost 1 out of the last 11 games in their stadium (7 wins, 3 draws, 1 lost against Bayern)

- Dortmund got 19 out of 21 points in the last 7 Bundesliga away-games. The last time we lost away was on the 22. Playday against Hamburg (a game we all remember).

Line up:

Borussia Dortmund: Weidenfeller - Piszczek, Subotic, Sokratis, Durm - Jojic, Bender - Großkreutz, Aubameyang (Kagawa), Mkhitaryan - Immobile (Ramos)

Coach: Jürgen Klopp

1. FSV Mainz 05: Karius - Brosinski, Bungert, Bell, Junior Diaz - Geis, Baumgartlinger - Allagui, Koo (Malli), Hofmann - Okazaki

Coach: Kasper Hjulmand

Stadium: Coface Arena (34.034)

Chris 26.03.2014

[[$facebook]] [[$flattr]]

[[$comments]]