Next Saturday, 25th of October 2014, a fairly unconvincing Borussia Dortmund will entertain Hannover at the Westfalenstadion for round nine of the Bundesliga, a match that the home side desperately needs to win if they at least want not to lose the front carriages of the German League train.

Dortmund’s nightmare at Bundesliga opened yet another chapter last weekend when Jürgen Klopp’s team visited the RheinEnergieStadion to meet the newcomers Köln and ended up by being defeated by 2-1. Although the former European champions could complain about referee’s performance during last Saturday’s match, the truth is they weren’t once again good enough and ended up collecting the fifth defeat in eight matches this season.

Dortmund are currently on the 14th place of the Bundesliga table and their last win on domestic competitions was already more than a month ago when they hosted Freiburg and won the match by 3-1 thanks to goals from Ramos, Aubameyang and Kagawa. Not even the return of Japanese playmaker, who left after an unsuccessful stint at Manchester United, served to inspire the team and rescue them from the abyss they are slowly sinking into.

The injury problems are nothing new when talking about Borussia Dortmund’s recent season and this campaign started the very same way, with plenty of players added to the injury list every week. Apart from that paramount problem, the departure of Lewandowski to Bayern Munich in the Summer left an empty void difficult to fill, as the team’s accuracy in front of goal is currently leaving something to be desired.

Last Wednesday’s night, Dortmund smashed Galatasaray at Turkey by 4-0 and continued their outstanding UEFA Champions League career this season.

For the next Saturday’s clash, Jürgen Klopp will not be able to rely on the contribution of Blaszczykowski, Kirch, Sahin and Schmelzer, all sidelined due to injury.

As Hannover, things are also far from being brilliant at the Bundesliga this season with the team losing four of their last five matches. After a somewhat positive start, things started to crumble when Hannover lost to Stuttgart late last month and after that match Die Roten have already collected two other consecutive defeats.

Despite everything that has been happening to them, Dortmund are favourites for next Saturday’s match as it presents a golden opportunity for them to get back on track and recover the players’ already heavily damaged motivation.

Borussia Dortmund

Stats: W-1 L-3 D-1

Recent Form - LLWLD

Hannover

Stats: W-1 L-4 D-0

Recent Form - LLLWL

Possible Line-ups

Borussia Dortmund (4-2-3-1) - Weidenfeller - Piszczek - Hummels - Sokratis - Erik Durm - Kehl - Jojic - Mkhitaryan - Kagawa- Reus - Immobile

Hannover (4-1-4-1) - Zieler - Sakai - Marcelo - Schulz - Pander - Gulselam - Bittencourt - Schmiedebach - Briand - Kiyotake - Joselu

Prediction

Borussia Dortmund 2 Hannover 0