Dortmund Season 3 Review

As the dust settles on the promotion party manager Lee Reynolds is getting down to the important stuff of leading Dortmund into Division 1.

“I am fully focused and want this club to succeed after the shambles of 2 seasons ago”, a determined Reynolds said.

Adding to the squad was key and Marco Reus was soon arriving from Barcelona with David Alaba moving in the opposite direction, Allan moved from Napoli along with Josip Brekalo with Arda Turan moving in the opposite direction, Michy Batshuayi moved to Juventus with Jesper Cillessen and Davie Selke coming in, Jonas Hector made the move from Cologne with Roman Eremenko and Robert Bauer moving the other way. With the squad assembled and ready pre-season went well winning 4 out of 5 games only losing to Villarreal.

Dortmund entered the season with huge optimism but facing Keano’s Real Madrid at home was a daunting prospect and it proved to be losing 5-0. This was real awakening a showed how hard this division really was. James McKenzie’s Chelsea were next away and a 2-1 victory, banished some of the memory of that heavy defeat. The form though in the league continued to suffer as Fenerbahce and Liverpool both defeating Dortmund and that was followed by a 2 all draw with Lazio. 4 points from 5 games was not the best start.

The turning appeared in a 3-0 success at Old Trafford, a defining moment Reynolds says in their season. “We had just come off the back of a 2-0 home defeat to Villarreal in the Top 100 Cup and confidence was low. The players were booed off and rightly so, our home form was suffering the players were feeling the pressure”, Reynolds said.

Although form picked up that elusive league home win did not happen until their 6th home league game against Atletico Madrid. This was in the middle of winning run of 7 games which included Top 100 Shield, Youth Cup and World Club Cup. Dortmund had started to looked a side capable of playing at this level, which had yielded 11 wins out of 14 league games a run which took them well into the SMFA qualification places. Dortmund bowed of the Top 100 Shield though losing at home to Lazio.

Dortmund continued to do well in both World Club Cup and Youth Cup although the Youth Cup run was brought to an abrupt end as they fell foul of the laws failing to change team for the Celta Vigo tie. The World Club Cup was ended yet again by Bayern going down 2-1 in a spirited display.

The rest of the season was blighted by inconsistent form but Dortmund were in with a shout of the top 4 until the last 3 games of the season finally finishing 6th in what is regarded as a highly successful season.

Reynolds was asked can he build on this, “we have to. The 1st team squad needs to improve in terms of depth as we have the SMFA Shield too. The youth team needs a bit more quality if we can get it, so pre-season is very important”

Reynolds has set a managerial stipulation that he will walk away if this club does not make the top 10 which based on last season should look easy but many have failed to build on such a decent season before.