Who can Borussia Dortmund sign to strengthen their squad in January?

Striker

Since the sale of Pierre Emerick Aubameyang in the last January transfer window, Die Schwarzgelben’s striker situation had been messy. Sure, we had Michy Batshuayi on loan from Chelsea for half a season, during which he produced some solid performances, scoring 7 goals in 9 Bundesliga appearances, and bagging 2 in the Europa league during his 4 outings in the competition.

Unfortunately for Michy and for us, an injury during a game with that small team from Gelsenkirchen saw his stellar run of form come to an end. We were left with Maximilian Philipp and a young Alexander Isak to lead the line. While Maxi did show moments of brilliance up front, his overall performances left us a little wanting, which to be fair is no fault of his own, as striker is not his natural position. Isak was also ineffective, but that’s due to his relative inexperience and lack of game time.

Then came the 2018/ 2019 season. We started off relatively well, (we have yet to lose in the Bundesliga, that’s pretty stellar), but anyone could see that even from the start, our attack was slow and at times quite ineffective. With Maxi leading the line, unfortunately, something was missing.

The board finally caved in, and brought in Paco Alcacer on loan from Barcelona, and what a revelation he has been. Scoring seemingly for fun, Alcacer has amassed 8 goals in 235 minutes on the field. What a difference a proper striker makes, wouldn’t you say?

At this point, you’re probably thinking, “right, we have Alcacer, he’s producing the goods, we should be set, right?” In one sense, yes. We have a striker that we can rely on to produce decisive goals, one that fits Lucien Favre’s system very well. The other side of this is that it shows how reliant we are on our star striker, and over reliance on a player is dangerous, especially if they go off injured, as Paco did on his debut. Thankfully, this injury proved to be minor, and we’ve had Alcacer on the field, even if he’s mainly come off the bench.

But the question remains, what if we lose him to injury for an extended period of time? At this point, our two main options would be Maxi Philipp and Gotze, and neither have proven to be an answer up front. That is why, in order to avoid a situation like the one we found ourselves in when Michy was carted off against Schalke, I feel that there is a pressing need to invest in a striker come January.