Looking back at the start of the 2025/2026 Bundesliga campaign, it seemed as if the season had already derailed for Borussia Mönchengladbach after just three matchdays.
After a hefty 0-4 loss at home against Werder Bremen, manager Geroardo Seoane was relieved from his duties and Eugen Polanski was named interim boss for the next couple of games.
After taking over, Polanski, a former Bundesliga midfielder and Poland international, didn’t immediately look like a permanent solution for the club.
Even with their new manager, the team continued their winless streak for five more games, losing to FC Bayern and trailing by five at half-time at home to Eintracht Frankfurt.
Off the pitch, even more chaos ensued, with CSO Roland Virkus stepping down after the bad start to the season and an eventful summer break, which saw him earn the ironic nickname „Don Rollo“ in Germany, because midfielder Florian Neuhaus drunkenly badmouthed his boss on his vacation to Mallorca.
Still winless after October, things turned around in November for the club.
Eugen Polanski managed his team to three straight convincing wins, regaining form and slowly climbing out of the hole theyd found themselves in just a couple of weeks back.
In this Borussia Mönchengladbach tactical analysis, we will take a look at what tactical changes Eugen Polanski made to turn things around, how he uses his players to the best of their abilities and what we can expect from his tactics and team going forward in the season.
Borussia Mönchengladbach Build Up
Borussia Mönchengladbach had a lot of problems under Seoane over the course of his tenure, but looking back at the start of the season, the team was just not a Bundesliga-level side, lacking pretty much everything, especially intensity.
Eugen Polanski had a lot of work in front of him when he took over, so the fact that it took a bit of time for him to finally get positive results is not surprising, but still not great.
One of the biggest problems was the play in possession from Gladbach.
While it didn’t look bad, and their players showed a lot of technical quality even in the darkest times, they never consistently played through the first line of press, which often led to them losing the ball close to their goal.
This led to a lot of dangerous situations and a lot of goals conceded, so their defensive struggles were directly tied to their struggle in the build-up.
Eugen Polanski decided to change things up in that regard for Gladbach, implementing a more vertical approach while also committing more players to the areas around the ball.
This allowed Gladbach to maintain more ball security and numerical advantages near the ball to play through the first line of their opponents press.
Gladbach now heavily involve their goalkeeper in the build-up, creating a numerical advantage in the first line.
Their back-three is in a rather interesting shape ever since Eugen Polanski took over as well.
The cent
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