Injury Hit Borussia Dortmund

Borussia Dortmund may be in the top 4 in the Bundesliga mid-way to the season and are still alive in the Champions League and DFB-Pokal but the injury woes throughout this campaign has surely given sleepless nights to Klopp. That they managed to top the Group in Champions League ahead of Arsenal and Napoli in spite of their resources being stretched to the utmost level bears testimony to the spirit of the team and the managerial prowess of Klopp.
The problem for Dortmund isn’t a lack of quality in their squad, but a lack of, well, a squad. Jurgen Klopp has been unable to use his best line-up all season long as injuries have forced him to blood youngsters and field senior players out of their natural positions.
The casualty list at Dortmund is staggering: Lukasz Piszczek, Mats Hummels, Neven Subotic, Marian Sarr, Marcel Schmelzer, Sven Bender, Ilkay Gundogan, Sebastian Kehl and Henrikh Mkhitaryan have all missed a month or more due to injuries.
The players coming back from injuries are although match fit, but they have been out of competitive action since September or earlier and hence they have lost that sharpness and fitness to play out the entire 90 minutes. The regulars like Nuri Sahin who had to fill for the long list of injured players have been over utilised and have featured in all of Dortmund’s matches thus far this season-thus facing a prospect of burning out early in the season. Players like Reus are suffering a dip in form due to being over used and might end up side lined themselves due to some injury being exposed in all the matches. Klopp has had practically no chance of resting his available players and keep them fresh and this adds on to the challenge as the season progresses further.
After their 52-game 2012/13 season, perhaps the summer break was not enough time for Dortmund to fully regenerate. Despite having more depth in attack than last season, BVB entered the current campaign with no more options at the back than before owing to the long list of injured players. The fact that so many players have to be played out of their positions in this season shows that club did not plan correctly during the transfer season. Rather than bringing in expensive, established players as depth and committing three or more years to their contracts, they’ve kept a small squad with room for promising talents like Jonas Hofmann, Marian Sarr, Koray Gunter, Marvin Ducksch and Jeremy Dudziak to fill in. It’s a less expensive option that gambles on the youngsters rapidly developing to a reliable level.
Klopp has ruled out any fresh additions to his squad when the transfer market opens in January but if Dortmund have to do well they have to increase the depth in their squad and cannot just trust their luck.