Do Borussia Dortmund Need a Big Transfer Deal in Final Week of Transfer Window?

When FSV Mainz 05 announced on their official website on Tuesday morning that Yunus Malli would be staying with the club for the time being, it meant Borussia Dortmund's biggest target of the transfer market was out of their reach.

Mainz's sporting director Christian Heidel confirmed what multiple media outlets had reported already: Dortmund and Mainz had agreed on the financial parameters of the transfer for the current transfer window, but the timing for the 05ers was just not right.

Now that Malli will stay at the Rhineland-Palatine side for at least six more months, Dortmund are back at square one. If they want to sign a new player, they have less than a week to make it happen.

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But do they really need a big transfer deal in the final week of the window?

On the surface, the only correct answer seems to be yes. 

The club let go of two players earlier in January, with Jonas Hofmann going to Borussia Monchengladbach and Adnan Januzaj returning to his parent club Manchester United after a disappointing loan spell at Signal Iduna Park. 

Dortmund's squad is dangerously thin on the wings, where both Hofmann and Januzaj ply their trade.

At the weekend, head coach Thomas Tuchel resorted to playing full-back Erik Durm as the left-winger when he substituted Marco Reus off after 70 minutes as a precaution, as he said after the game, per the official Dortmund website. The only other option from the bench would've been to give 17-year-old Christian Pulisic his senior debut.

It worked out on Saturday—Dortmund beat Gladbach 3-1—but it seems a dangerous proposition to go into the busy part of the second half of the season's schedule with the squad as it is.

As Dirk Krampe pointed out for local paper Ruhr Nachrichten (link in German), Tuchel's squad consists of 25 players, but among them are three goalkeepers and two 17-year-olds—Pulisic and Felix Passlack—of whom one shouldn't expect too much at the start of their professional careers.

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That number also includes Nuri Sahin, who's played in nine competitive matches since the end of the 2013/14 season, per Transfermarkt.co.uk, and midfielders Pascal Stenzel and Moritz Leitner, who've played exclusively in the UEFA Europa League so far.

For a club as ambitious as Dortmund, going into the rest of the season with the current setup could be considered careless. They can play up to 28 more matches this season if they advance to the finals of both the Europa League and the DFB-Pokal. If they don't add to their squad, one major injury to regulars such as Reus or Henrikh Mkhitaryan could derail their season.

Having said all that, one can also make the case that Dortmund don't necessarily have to make a splash in these last few days of the transfer window.

It would take a meltdown of epic proportions for the Black and Yellows not to finish in a spot that directly qualifies for next season's UEFA Champions League: They are a whopping 12 points ahead of Gladbach in fourth place.

With that in mind, Tuchel could easily rotate his squad in the Bundesliga and focus on the cups. That would allow youngsters such as Pulisic to get quality playing time with the first team this season, which would be a big bonus to his development.

With BVB's head coach keeping expectations for his young players low in the press conference before last Saturday's game against Gladbach, however, as relayed by Dortmund-based writer Stefan Buczko, it seems unreasonable to think they will be trusted to carry the load as first back-up options.

Tuchel has made relatively clear that he expects the club to make signings, telling German TV station Sky Sport News during the Dubai training camp that they need to add to their thin squad in order to compete in all competitions, per Buczko for YellowWallPod.com.

Not a lot has changed since then, and it's tough to argue with the 42-year-old. If Dortmund are serious about making this season special, they'll have to invest some money. The clock is ticking.

Lars Pollmann is a Featured Columnist writing on Borussia Dortmund. He also writes for YellowWallPod.com. You can follow him on Twitter.