Borussia Dortmund vs FC Augsburg Prediction, Betting Tips & Preview

Preview

Haydn Cunningham Oct 14, 2015 @ 03:37 pm

Borussia Dortmund kept the pressure up on Bayern Munich after a 2-0 win over Mainz on Friday night. Dortmund were winless in 4 prior to the Mainz victory and it was important for them to get back to winning ways after returning from the international break. Thomas Tuchel will have been slightly concerned with the performance despite the pleasing result with Marco Reus missing a penalty as well as lacklustre defending on numerous occasions. With the small chance it does come down to goal difference at the end of the season Dortmund can’t afford for Munich to run away from them in the goals department as they trail Pep Guardiola’s side by 12 goals after just 9 Bundesliga games. 

Victories for Stuttgart and Hannover on Sunday condemned Augsburg to the foot of the trouble as they would’ve thought proceedings couldn’t possibly get worse after suffering their 6^th league defeat of the season at home to Darmstadt. Despite qualifying for the Europa League last year they’ve not been a glimmer of themselves last year and are in desperate need of an overhaul to get a turn around their fortunes. A confidence boosting point at Bayer Leverkusen before the international break looked to stand them in good stead but they were wasteful in front of goal against Darmstadt. Augsburg had 20 efforts on goal Saturday but just 3 of them were on target. They had 71% of possession and still came out with another loss. 

Augsburg didn’t gain a single draw away from home last year and you certainly can’t see them going to Dortmund and winning the way the season has gone for both sides. Thomas Tuchel has done a magnificent job since taking over from Jurgen Klopp in the summer and on the attack they look very menacing. Dortmund have lost just once in the past 13 games in all competitions at home and have scored 40 goals in the process. Augsburg enjoyed away victories at Dortmund, Bayern Munich and Borussia Monchengladbach last year but are lightyears away from repeating those remarkable results. That victory over Dortmund was the last time these 2 sides met and in the other 7 meetings at the Signal Iduna Park stadium, Dortmund have won 5 and lost 0.

Marcel Schmelzer missed the win over Mainz but the left back is confident of returning to training this week ahead of the visit from Augsburg. His thigh strain meant Reus was deployed on the left side of the pitch and he benefitted from Schmelzer’s absence due to the amount of space he had. Nuri Sahin and Eirk Durm have also returned to training but will require subsequent time to get fully match fit. The key trio out for Augsburg are Sascha Molders and defensive duo Konstantinos Stafylidis and Hong Jeong-Ho.

Dortmund

Stats: W-6 L-1 D-2

Recent Form - DDDLW

Augsburg

Stats: W-1 L-6 D-2

Recent Form - LLLDL

Head-to-head record:

Possible Line-ups

Dortmund (4-2-3-1) – Burki, Ginter, Sokratis, Hummels, Park, Weigl, Gundogan, Reus, Kagawa, Mkhitaryan, Aubameyang.

Augsburg (4-5-1) – Hitz, Verhaegh, Callsen-Bracker, Klavan, Max, Koo, Baier, Bobadilla, Trochowski, Werner, Caiuby. 

Injury List/Suspended Players

Dortmund – Schmelzer (inj), Leitner (inj)
Augsburg – Stafylidis (inj), Molders (inj), Jeong-Ho (inj).

League Positions