Fortuna Dusseldorf vs Borussia Dortmund 19/12/18

19 December 2018

Fortuna Dusseldorf and Borussia Dortmund will face-off at the Esprit Arena in contrasting circumstances. While the hosts struggle to cope with the challenges in the top flight after securing promotion last year, the visitors comfortably top the table, without losing once since the start of the season.

The returnees come into this encounter following a promising 2-0 win over Freiburg at home during the weekend. It was their third home triumph this term, second in the last three games, as they are yet to play out a draw in front of the local supporters. However, apart from those three successes, the Flingeraner lost all of their remaining five home meetings, failing to find the back of the net three times in the run. An encouraging fact for Friedhelm Funkel could be that his players avoided a loss against two teams from top five, holding RB Leipzig to a 1-1 draw before being locked in a 3-3 stalemate with Bayern Munich on the road. But, Funkel would rather forget about his team’s clashes with other two top-five side that have seen them losing 7-1 to Eintracht Frankfurt and 3-0 to Borussia Monchengladbach.

On the other hand, the current Bundesliga leaders come into this game following a 2-1 home triumph over Werder Bremen last weekend, which was their sixth successive league victory. Unbeaten in all of their opening 15 opening fixtures, the BVB (12) are the only team in the German top tier competition to secure over nine wins this campaign. The Black and Yellows have scored at least two goals per match in their last five Bundesliga outings. Their tally of 41 goals bagged so far is a comfortable Bundesliga high, as Lucien Favre’s man failed to find the back of the net just once in the league thus far. Another impressive thing is that Borussia Dortmund managed to clinch five consecutive wins on the road following two straight draws in the opening stage of the competition.