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When Borussia Dortmund hosts Werder Bremen on Friday night, they'll be hoping to win their fifth straight Bundesliga game.
The visitors have dropped five of their first seven games, and they enter the weekend's games just two points above the danger zone.Dortmund has recovered well to go back into the title race despite recklessly squandering points in back-to-back draws against likely relegation prospects VfL Bochum and Heidenheim earlier in the season.
Following victories over Freiburg, Wolfsburg, Hoffenheim, and Union Berlin, Edin Terzic's team has moved into a point tie with Bayern Munich, with whom they famously battled for the title last year. Surprisingly, Bayer Leverkusen and Stuttgart are surprising leaders in the standings.
Results in the Champions League haven't been great, with BVB losing 2-0 away to Paris Saint-Germain in their first game before drawing 0-0 with AC Milan at home. As a result, their chances of advancing from the "Group of Death" might be exceedingly narrow if they lose at Newcastle United on the road the following Wednesday.
Of course, it is still very early in both leagues, and there is no denying that Dortmund has had a much more leisurely start to the season in terms of their domestic match schedule. This appears to be continuing on Friday at the Westfalenstadion, with meetings against the three teams now above them as well as RB Leipzig coming all inside their ensuing six games.
Werder Bremen, on the other hand, has generally started this season as they ended the last one: slowly. Following their promotion from the second division in 2022, Ole Werner's team blasted off like a locomotive, winning 21 points in their first 13 games to alleviate any concerns about relegation before dropping 15 of their final 21 league games.
This trend has basically continued into their second season back in the top division, and it does not exactly speak well for their chances of staying in the Bundesliga once more. They have suffered crushing 4-2 losses on the road to newly promoted Heidenheim and SV Darmstadt 98.
Die Werderaner are very capable of scoring goals, as seen by the fact that they have scored two or more goals in each of their previous five league games, despite losing their star striker Niclas Fullkrug to their upcoming opponents in the very end of the summer transfer window. However, they have only managed to keep two clean sheets in their last 20 league games, indicating that as the season progresses, defense will continue to be a major worry for them.
Werner's hope is that they would outperform the clubs surrounding them by winning more games, therefore it looks that attack is their best form of defense. After all, despite a sluggish start, they managed to defeat Mainz 05 and FC Koln, the two teams presently occupying the automatic relegation spots. However, pulling off an upset at Dortmund on Friday night may prove to be a difficult task.
