One point against league leaders Bielefeld, even four points against second placed Holstein Kiel: the U23 team got 15 of their 27 points against the “top 7” of the 3. Bundesliga. These figures prove: David Wagner’s team can not only just hold their own in this league, they cause the top clubs big problems.

Whoever has statistics like these does not look like being a team involved in the fight against relegation. However the Black Yellows are right in the thick of it and there is a five point gap to the team in seventeenth place. Sunday next week there will be the direct clash against SpVgg Unterhaching. Wagner proclaimed: “this is our final”. He added in football talk: “we’ve got to do the job – we have to win -, “so that there is only a small gap left for us to go into the last games.”

A lot of people have already written off the Borussia Dortmund U23, who have not won a single game yet in calendar year 2015. Wagner looks back and shows a fighting spirit: “in the last years the gap in points wasn’t as big, but we still only ever managed to avoid relegation on the last day of the season. The situation is difficult, but it is not impossible. We will have to really get stuck in.”

The head coach expressed his thoughts: “the 0:1 home defeat against the direct rival Groβaspach was the “absolute negative highlight of the season”, but we still managed to deal with that situation.” He refers to winning a point at Fortuna Köln (0:0) and the decent match against MSV Duisburg, where the margin of defeat was far too high (1:4). And he hopes that after the international break, one or the other player who was injured (Derstoff, Nyarko, Zimmermann, Weber, Flores) will be back to lay the foundation next Saturday at Stuttgarter Kickers for what is hoped to be the “final” one week later against Unterhaching.

The BVB U23 got a well-deserved draw against the team from Swabia in the first half of the season. Wagner said: “the situation may be so that we have won points fairly often against the top teams, but all in all there were too many draws and not enough wins.”

And let’s face it, the twelve defeats are not Borussia’s main problem. Only ten teams have not lost as often. This is also a statistic in a season that could still turn out to be positive for the U23 team. It is just that they have to start winning now. The best thing would be if they start doing this when they visit the fourth placed team from Stuttgart.

Boris Rupert