Shinji Kagawa Must Step Up for Borussia Dortmund After Henrikh Mkhitaryan Injury

Borussia Dortmund's injury worries have continued to grow at an exponential pace this season, with latest victim Henrikh Mkhitaryan picking up a foot injury in the defeat to Mainz, sidelining him for the next four weeks.

The Armenian international joins a growing list of crocked stars in Jurgen Klopp's squad, with the former Bundesliga champions now looking as though they'll be down to the bare bones for the next few games in what has already proved to be a grueling season. 

On one hand, fans of the club will be cursing their luck once again as another season becomes overrun with unforeseen misfortune with star players falling one by one. Yet on the other, they'll at least take solace in the precautions the board took over the summer to sign a whole new batch of worthy replacements. 

One of these backup stars is none other than Shinji Kagawa, the former Manchester United player who has returned to the club that made him the envy of Europe. This attacking midfielder, still only 25 years old, has been rushed straight into the starting team and may well be the very man to replace Mkhitaryan. 

Kagawa is of course no stranger to dominating Bundesliga games. In his final season at Dortmund, before moving to the Premier League, the Japanese international managed to produce a dazzling run of form that saw him score 13 goals and create 12 assists in just 31 appearances(via transfermarkt). 

A tally to match the likes of Mario Gotze and Marco Reus, and a rich vein of form that we've yet to see from Dortmund's new No.10, Mkhitaryan. 

The ability to replace the Armenian over the next four weeks is certainly all within Kagawa's grasp, so the real question is whether we'll see the attacking midfielder of old or the laboured, somewhat troubled figure that haunted Old Trafford for two seasons. 

Fortunately, a quick look at his first two performances for Dortmund would suggest the former.

Squawka

As the Squawka graphic above shows, depicting Kagawa's passes throughout the 3-1 win over Freiburg two weeks ago, the Japanese international was thrown into the game through necessity yet ended up doing rather well as a central, attacking midfielder. 

With a passing accuracy of 84 percent, Kagawa looked as though he had quickly slotted back into a team that seemed all too happy to have him back. Not ground-breaking stuff on his first game back, but still very encouraging signs.

Of course there clearly aren't any assists or piercing through balls on show in such a sample of passes, with Mkhitaryan taking the responsibility of play-maker that day, yet the midfielder did manage to bag himself a goal on his returning debut to the club. A perfect start to his move back to Germany. 

In the following match against Mainz on Saturday evening, we saw a Dortmund display that has come to represent the team following Champions League games of late. Although Klopp was able to shuffle his side around to an extent, the starting XI still looked tired and far from up to the challenge. 

However, it was an opportunity for Kagawa to play in his favoured No.10 role, as Mkhitaryan took a rest on the bench, with two fully committed wingers in Kevin Grosskreutz and Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang on the left and right respectively. 

As has been said, Dortmund didn't look very good at all against Mainz. Yet at times Kagawa did look encouraging in his old role for the club. 

Frank Augstein/Associated Press

Leading from his central midfield role, the Japanese international was quite notably the one player pulling all of Dortmund's strings in the first half and was at the heart of every chance that Adrian Ramos failed to take advantage of. 

In fact, it was only really once Klopp threw on the cavalry in Mkhitaryan and Ciro Immobile that Kagawa's influence on the team began to diminish. Up until this point, the defensive line along with the midfield duo of Sven Bender and Milos Jojic were quite happy picking the ball up and passing it straight to Kagawa, yet when the Armenian play-maker walked onto the pitch, the dimensions certainly changed. 

In the end it did little good and Dortmund dropped another three points in a title race they can't afford to be sloppy in, but there were notable good points to take from the game. 

It's undoubtedly the case that Kagawa seems to thrive when the attacking process is simplified and the responsibility of creating chances is bestowed entirely upon him.  

As such, these coming weeks may in fact come to make the Japanese midfielder's return to Dortmund rather than break them. For it looks as though he may finally have the time and space to reestablish himself as the key play-maker within this squad. 

Dortmund travel to Stuttgart on Wednesday night—a team who find themselves bottom of the Bundesliga table with just one point—before they make the trip to Gelsenkirchen on Saturday to face Schalke in the first Ruhr derby of the season. 

Both games will come with their own weight of emotional baggage as fans begin to demand results to compensate a rather bumpy start to the season. 

Klopp will likely welcome back club captain Mats Hummels before the end of the week along with a fully fit strike force at his disposal too, yet it will be in the centre of the park that each Dortmund fan will be focussing on for the next four weeks. 

No Reus, no Jakub Blaszczykowski, no Ilkay Gundogan and no Mkhitaryan, just Kagawa. A player who will likely make or break the immediate future of these hopeful title contenders. 

@Sbienkowski