Grading Borussia Dortmund's New Arrivals at Halfway Point of the 2015/16 Season

The Bundesliga gives onlookers time to properly look back on the first half of the season with a month-long winter break. When reviewing the performance of Borussia Dortmund, one thing is certain: The Black and Yellows' "Hinrunde" of the 2015/16 season couldn't have gone much better.

Considering their ill-fated '14/15 campaign, plenty of changes were always going to be needed to get back on track. The biggest change, of course, came to light during that campaign: On April 15, Jurgen Klopp announced his decision to leave the club at the succession of the season, and only four days later, Thomas Tuchel signed a contract to follow in the charismatic coach's footsteps.

With Tuchel came a new staff and a football philosophy that has reinvigorated a Dortmund side that had shown signs of stagnation towards the end of Klopp's highly successful tenure at Signal Iduna Park.

That wouldn't have been possible without a few transfers, of course. The triumvirate of Tuchel, sporting director Michael Zorc and CEO Hans-Joachim Watzke share responsibilities in the transfer department—and they were busy in the summer.

With Mitch Langerak, Oliver Kirch, Kevin Kampl, Milos Jojic, Kevin Grosskreutz, Jakub Blaszczykowski, Ciro Immobile and fringe players Zlatan Alomerovic and Jeremy Dudziak, no fewer than nine players were sold outright or loaned out. Also, long-time club captain Sebastian Kehl hung up his boots at the end of the year.

The club aimed to offset those 10 departures with four signings: Roman Burki, Joo-Ho Park, Julian Weigl and Gonzalo Castro. They also brought in Adnan Januzaj on loan. 

On the following pages, we present our grades for each of the five new arrivals after the first half of the campaign. These grades go from 1/10 to 10/10, with 10 a perfect score.

We also encourage you to share your grades for Dortmund's new players in the comments below.

Roman Burki: 4/10

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Roman Burki joined Dortmund after spending one year at SC Freiburg. Thanks to a release clause activated by Freiburg's relegation, he was available for a modest €3,5 million.

Tuchel didn't make the announcement until August (via Kicker, in German), but it was widely regarded as fait accompli that Burki would become his side's first-choice goalkeeper. The former Grasshoppers man plays only in the Bundesliga and the DFB-Pokal, however.

Overall, Burki's performances have been up and down—we highlighted the 25-year-old's inconsistent first season at Dortmund earlier in December. He followed up weak performances, like the one in the 5-1 battering at the hands of Bayern Munich, with strong showings, most notably in the win at FSV Mainz or in the Revierderby against local rivals FC Schalke.

In a sense, Burki's performance on the final matchday before the winter break, a 2-1 defeat at Cologne, was symbolic for his Hinrunde: He kept his team in the game with two brilliant saves before a catastrophic error—which, in fairness, had a lot to do with the field conditions—led to Cologne's equaliser.

Joo-Ho Park: 2/10

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Joo-Ho Park joined the Black and Yellows in late August from Mainz. Having played under Tuchel for the 05ers, the 28-year-old South Korea international's appeal to Dortmund lied in his familiarity with the head coach.

His versatility probably played a part as well, and €3 million for an experienced back-up didn't sound like a bad deal at the time.

Unfortunately, Park has largely been a disappointment with BVB. The man who Spielverlagerung.de's Rene Maric (link in German) called Asia's answer to Philipp Lahm looks out of place whenever he gets an opportunity to play for the Ruhr side.

He's only played in four Bundesliga games and was a liability in those. ESPN FC's Stefan Buczko rated him 1/10 in his most recent outing against Cologne, where he was taken off at half-time after an abysmal performance.

Apart from his first game for the club, where he scored and assisted in a 2-1 win over FC Krasnodar in the UEFA Europa League, Park hasn't shown he has the quality to even be a squad member at a side as strong as Dortmund.

Julian Weigl: 10/10

Matthias Schrader/Associated Press

A relative unknown on the pitch, Julian Weigl was more famous for wearing the captain's armband at 1860 for a mere 10 days until a suspension for disciplinary reasons cut that episode short, per German magazine Spiegel (link in German).

From his first appearances in Black and Yellow, however, the €2.5 million Dortmund paid looked like an absolute bargain.

The Germany under-20 international has been, in short, superb for such a young player making that kind of a step up in competition and playing in this important a role, as he's often the lone holding midfielder providing balance and structure in Dortmund's hybrid 4-2-3-1/4-1-4-1/4-3-3 alignments.

The 20-year-old is so important to Tuchel's Dortmund that he's played in the most games of all players in the squad, missing just one of the 30 matches across all competitions with an illness.

While Weigl seemed to hit the proverbial rookie wall a bit towards the later stages of the Hinrunde, his meteoric rise from virtual unknown to indispensable starter has been nothing short of sensational.

Gonzalo Castro: 7/10

Michael Probst/Associated Press

If our grades would only cover the last two months of the first half of the season, Gonzalo Castro would probably have earned the top grade of all new arrivals. We have to include the first part of the Hinrunde, however.

After signing from Bayer Leverkusen for €11 million, the 28-year-old was considered Dortmund's most important signing to start the Tuchel era. It took Castro a few weeks to really get going, though. He spent a grand total of 30 minutes on the pitch in his team's first five games of the Bundesliga campaign.

Since then, he's gotten better and better. We ranked him as Dortmund's top player in November, citing clever movement, great ideas and positional versatility as his biggest strengths.

Certainly one of the Bundesliga's best 12th men, it's almost unfair that Castro isn't a regular starter for BVB. 

Adnan Januzaj: 3/10

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Adnan Januzaj joined Dortmund on loan from Manchester United on the last day of the German transfer window. As we highlighted after BVB's loss against PAOK earlier in December, the deal hasn't worked out for any of the three parties involved thus far.

Amazingly, Januzaj has still started more games for the Red Devils this season than for Dortmund, four to three. The Belgium international has only played in six Bundesliga matches for his new club, without a single start.

In recent weeks, the 20-year-old hasn't even made the squad, despite the club's Twitter account saying he wasn't injured. There's already chatter that the loan deal could be ended in the winter, per German tabloid Bild (link in German).

Two facts saving the highly touted winger's grade at least a little bit are that he's shown glimpses of his massive potential almost every time he did get the opportunity to play and that his late arrival set him up to fail early on in his Dortmund career. 

Adjusting from Premier League to Bundesliga football without any preparation time seemed too much to ask for from such a young player.

All transfer information via Transfermarkt (link in German).