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naoya's avatar

Over in BVB land, I was pleasantly intrigued to see Axel Witsel taking a more progressive attacking role, both receiving/taking the ball deeper into the attacking third and completing diagonal balls to teammates making runs into the 18. Given his static play on the offensive end toward the end of last season I was fearing that my #28 jersey was a rash purchase so this was definitely nice to see.

Do you think the increased attacking ambition from Witsel & Weigl portends a brighter future for the double 6 combination? I wonder now if Brandt will be employed as a winger after all in light of this, and whether Dahoud has any future there at all.

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BundesAbel's avatar

Afaik the plan is still to use Brandt next to Witsel (though the defensive parts of Brandt's game make this questionable) in some games, with Delaney probably also getting some of the easier games (like say v Mainz or Union). I suppose you could also rest Witsel in some of those, because he wore down around February last season. I think Dahoud is pretty unlikely to get any minutes, the U21 Euros kinda made him a latecomer to training camp and he's probably CM number 5 or 6 at this point. He was part of the B squad that played against Münster right after the cup match, but did basically nothing of note. Afaik there was some interest by Bremen and Frankfurt, but they could never taken on his wages. He's at that weird state where he makes 5 million Euros per year (until 2022) and there's basically only Bayern (now that Wolfsburg are smart) who could pay that. The problem is that he's turning 24 in January and we're still not sure whether he's a Bundesliga starter on a top 6 club.

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