Rose: “We will react to fatigue and rotate as necessary”

During his pre-match press conference ahead of Tuesday’s Bundesliga home game against Werder Bremen (18:30 CET kick-off), Borussia head coach Marco Rose spoke about…

team news: Alassane Plea is still a little bit injury prone at the moment. We’re hopeful that he will become more resistant as the season goes on, but we have to be careful with him at the moment. Valentino Lazaro will continue to miss out with muscular problems, but he’s making good progress. He has an MRI scan later today and after that we will have a better idea of when we can start reintroducing him to training. Breel Embolo will continue to train and play with a brace for the next four to six weeks after having surgery on his hand fracture. The brace doesn’t affect him though – he’s gotten accustomed to it very quickly.

playing a midweek fixture: We don’t have much time to train this week. The players who featured on the weekend did some recovery work today. The rest of the squad did a final training session ahead of tomorrow’s game. We will certainly react to fatigue for the Bremen game, and change things and rotate as necessary. I don’t expect Bremen to play with the same starting line-up as they did on the weekend either though. The fact that we have to prepare for two very different sides this week is just part of our job. We need to find solutions for both, so that’s why we will also be having video sessions to get a better feel for our opponents.

Tuesday’s opponents: Every team looks to achieve the best results possible with the means available to them. I feel like Bremen have gone about this season very matter-of-factly. They’re focused on what they have and what they can do. It’s a very pragmatic approach. After what happened last season, it’s about finding stability for Werder. Nevertheless, they’re a side with good players and with a good concept. They have often played with a back-three or five in recent weeks. They sat a little deeper against Augsburg on the weekend, but I think they will mix things up. We have watched a number of Werder’s games and analysed them. Our job is to find ways of attacking their goal and then of course dealing with Bremen on the counter.

Werder head coach Florian Kohfeldt: I did my coaching badges together with Flo. He’s a great guy and has a great footballing concept. Regardless of results, I consider him a fine coach. At this level though, us coaches are always going to be measured by our results.

Denis Zakaria’s progress: You saw with his goal in Stuttgart just what Denis is capable of. The goal will have helped him grow belief in his dynamism, his quality and his strengths. The guy was out injured for eight months and so he will still need to be patient until he’s back at his very best. But he’s on course and is progressing well. He’s a very versatile player, both as an attacking asset and as a holding midfielder.

18.01.2021

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