The areas that Borussia Dortmund must fix – and fast – tactical analysis

Borussia Dortmund’s 2020/21 Bundesliga campaign has been nothing short of a disappointment. They started the previous season strong, before falling off the pace and finishing 13 points behind eventual winners Bayern Munich. But this season, due to a terrible run of form which has led to Lucien Favre’s sacking, Dortmund are already five points off the top and we’re not even at the halfway point. 

This gap could be even more if it wasn’t for a return to form under ex-West Ham assistant coach Edin Terzić. Whilst Dortmund do already look stronger than they did in Favre’s final days under Terzić, they still don’t look like serious title contenders, and the remit for Terzić will have been to hold down the fort, ensure they qualify for the Champions League, and Dortmund can spend the meantime planning the long-term future of the club. The name on everyone’s lips for the vacant permanent Head Coach position is Borussia Monchengladbach’s current manager, Marco Rose. This would certainly be more of a move back to a similar style of football under Jurgen Klopp and Thomas Tuchel and would likely be a welcome appointment from the Dortmund faithful. 

Nevertheless, the new head coach, whoever that may be, will have their hands full, looking to fix some of Dortmund’s shortcomings under Favre. And let’s be clear, the issues highlighted in this article are problems that were long seen under Favre. These are long standing issues and not quick fixes.

Favre was never quite at home at Dortmund. His laboured and slow, passing approach was a move away from the high-energy counter-pressing football Dortmund had become accustomed to, and it always seemed like an odd fit. It felt like Dortmund had been waiting for a while to pull the plug on Favre’s reign, and the 5-1 loss to Stuttgart back in December was the last straw.

The changing room appeared to give up on the tactics of the Head Coach with the likes of Mats Hummels and Marco Reus, prominent figures within the team, publicly questioning Dortmund’s shortcomings under the coach. Even though Dortmund don’t have the budget to compete on those terms with Bayern Munich, there are still great expectations at this team, and the new coach will have to put a suitable style of football in place, along with getting the senior, experienced players on board to ensure the club culture is right.

This analysis if the first in a series of three, looking at where Dortmund need to improve. This specific tactical analysis will highlight the key defensive shortcomings of this Dortmund side.

Statistics

It’s no secret that there have been defensive issues for some time at Dortmund. A characteristic of the Favre regime was a loss of concentration from the defence in key times, or just a general lack of organisation that preceded the moments before an opposition goal.

We can begin to notice a concerning pattern when we look at their statistics from last season. For example, Dortmund had the second-lowest expected goals against in the league for the 2019//20 season..

The only issue is, whereas Bayern were outperforming against their xGA  of 38.56 by having only conceded 32 goals, Dortmund were underperforming against their xGA of 39.16 by having conceded 41.

If we were then to look at the teams with the lowest goals conceded we can see that Leipzig and Monchengladbach both conceded less goals than Dortmund, and were both outperforming against their own xGA’s respectively. Out of this top four, Dortmund were the only side to be underperforming defensively.