Borussia Mönchengladbach are bottom of the Bundesliga with four points from nine games, three behind Union Berlin in the relegation play-off place, and the international break has exposed how thin their squad is: only 16 outfield players trained on Tuesday. According to Sportschau, Monday's session had 18, among them youngsters Dillon Berko, Tyler Meiser and Josiah Uwakhonye, who normally play for the under-23s.
The gap in numbers
Gladbach have one win, one draw and seven defeats, with 12 goals scored and 25 conceded. Union, 16th, have 7 points and Schalke, 17th, have 6. Augsburg, 14th, and Cologne, 15th, both have 9, five more than Gladbach. Gladbach's goal difference of -13 is one better than Union's -14. The league restarts on Saturday 21 November (15:30), when Gladbach host Dortmund, Union host Leipzig, and Schalke host Stuttgart at 18:30.
Muscle injuries
Sportschau counts six Gladbach players who missed Friday's 3-1 defeat at Hamburg with muscle problems, with four more having missed games earlier for the same reason. Gladbach's Enzo Leopold (cruciate ligament) and left-back Lukas Ullrich are out longer. Ullrich broke his collarbone at Hamburg and, the club said on Saturday, will be unavailable "in the coming weeks". Only four players are away with national teams: Wael Mohya (Germany), Ko Itakura (Japan), Fabio Chiarodia (Italy under-21s) and Mathieu Nguefack (Germany under-19s). On Tuesday, captain Tim Kleindienst and Gladbach's Robin Hack worked on their fitness on a side pitch while Gladbach's Shūto Machino ran laps alone.
Goalkeeper and captain
The list reaches the goal too. WDR reported on 4 November that first-choice goalkeeper Moritz Nicolas was out with a muscle strain and that Daniel Batz, 35, would deputise, after two competitive games without conceding (a 2-0 cup win over Karlsruhe and a 0-0 draw with Paderborn). Kleindienst has suffered his second torn muscle fibre of the season, and Nicolas Kühn had a relapse. Coach Alexander Blessin said he was "slowly running out of words".
Why muscles give way
Blessin wants his side to press hard and play at high tempo. "For what we want to play, we have to set a few peaks," he said, while adding that building players up "doesn't work from one day to the next". Moritz Anderten of the German Sport University Cologne, speaking generally to WDR rather than about Gladbach, said teams low in the table are tempted to squeeze in work that belongs to pre-season: "Then you overload the muscles."
