Borussia Dortmund’s away day woes and how Sebastien Haller can help fix them

The role Sebastien Haller can play in improving Borussia Dortmund’s away fortunes

This is where Sebastien Haller comes in.

"“The package as a whole is very promising. Sebastien has a great physical presence and is very resilient. With his experience, he can help our youngsters in attack and provide stability.”"

This is what Sebastian Kehl said at the time of Haller’s signing. The Ivory Coast international was always supposed to be Borussia Dortmund’s point man in the box and provide a reliable end product to attacks.

When we take a quick look at his 20/21 and 21/22 stats from his time at Ajax and compare them with his performances in black and yellow, we can notice the pockets where Haller is still building up strength. Both his shots per game and aerial duels won per game stand at almost half from his time in the Netherlands.

As a classic central striker in a free flowing system like that of Ajax, Haller contributed by being the finisher, or the link up guy in the box. And from a stability perspective, his aerial prowess gives his teams another angle to retain possession up the pitch.

This shot-map by understat gives a better idea of Haller’s shooting areas. Now we know that comparing these stats from a different league is like comparing apples and oranges. Especially with everything that Haller went through between his last Ajax game and his first BVB game. But these stats still give us an insight into analysing Haller’s potential and this is where Dortmund needs to get the best out of him.

Bringing them together

No doubt that it’s very pleasing to see Sebastien Haller regain his confidence and get back among the goals. These goals are exactly what we desperately needed from him. Now the final piece of the puzzle is for him to be that differentiating factor to decide our away games.

Six of Haller’s seven goals have come at home in front of the vociferous BVB crowd. And the challenge now is to become a reliable provider of goals on the road where the going really gets tough and makes the difference in all those tight matches.

Against low blocks, Borussia Dortmund need to use more of Haller’s link up qualities coupled with penetrating runs from the midfield. And as a general approach, we hope to see BVB mixing up a few direct approaches with Haller as the target man. Like they did in the game against Borussia Mönchengladbach.

Going into the final away game of the season, Borussia Dortmund will want all their primary, secondary and tertiary plans to be well oiled if they want to make the best of this position and win the Bundesliga title come next weekend.