The Daily Bee (November 12th, 2018): Matchday 11 recap and Weigl’s difficult situation

• Matchday 11 recap

The highlight of matchday 11 was of course Dortmund’s brilliant 3-2 win over Bayern Munich to stay at the top of the Bundesliga, but there some other interesting results.

Borussia Mönchengladbach won their away game 3-1 in Bremen and remain in 2nd place just 4 points behind Dortmund. Gladbach are a young and talented team and the offseason addition of Alassane Pléa has paid of, Lucien Favre’s ex player has already scored 8 goals this season. Die Fohlen could be a title candidate this season.

The same goes for RB Leipzig who easily won 3-0 against a slumping Bayer Leverkusen team. Since Leipzig’s loss to BVB on matchday 1 they have played a fantastic season and are now in 3rd place just 5 points behind Dortmund.

Eintracht Frankfurt continue to be the surprise team of the season. That statement might sound a bit weird, they did win the DFB Cup last season and finished in a respectable 8th place, but after the offseason losses of their coach and several key players a lot of pundits expected them in the nether regions of the table. Adi Hütter’s team has proved everybody wrong, after their dominant 3-0 win over Schalke they have moved into 4th place, pushing Bayern out of the top 4. In addition they have been great in the Europa League as well with 4 straight wins.

The disappointments so far this season continue to be Bayer Leverkusen (13th) and Schalke 04 (14th) who both find themselves in the relegation zone. Both teams were shockingly bad on Sunday, especially going forward. Domenico Tedesco and Heiko Herrlich have to turn it around or they’ll be out of a job soon.

Daily Buzz: What’s happening to Julian Weigl?

The 23-year-old central midfielder burst onto the scene during the 2015/16 season, Thomas Tuchel’s first season in charge of Borussia Dortmund, and immediately became one of BVB’s most important players. However since Tuchel left his performances have continuously degraded, this started last season under Peter Bosz and Peter Stöger and has continued under Lucien Favre. Now lost his starting spot to Axel Witsel arguably BVB’s best player this season and his performances next to him have been disappointing.

So far Weigl has only played in 6 different games this season and his most recent performance against Bayern Munich hasn’t helped his case for more playing time. The experiment of a Witsel/Weigl double pivot has failed and we probably won’t see it for quite some time. This leaves the German international in a precarious situation, he’s essentially Witsel’s back-up until further notice and the Belgian midfielder has been phenomenla for the black and yellows.

This begs the question, what’s the best step for Weigl and BVB? Wait until he can succeed Witsel in midfield, loan him out so he can get playing time or maybe even sell him?