Flawed Transfer Policy Not Injuries to Blame for Borussia Dortmund's Troubles

"It's not a crisis," Borussia Dortmund goalkeeper Roman Burki said after Saturday's disappointing goalless draw with Schalke 04 saw the Black and Yellows drop another two points in a winless month of October, per the club's official website.

The Switzerland international further followed the company line: "Our team is young, and we have a lot of players out injured."

It is undeniable that a major injury crisis has thrown a spanner in Dortmund's works this season, as up to 11 first-team players missed matches with various ailments, among them key performers such as team captain Marcel Schmelzer and superstar Marco Reus, who has yet to make his debut in the campaign.

However important the personnel situation is, it is only a mitigating circumstance, not an explanation or even excuse for Dortmund's sluggish showings at about the halfway mark of the first half of the 2016/17 season.

Sitting sixth in the league table, eight points behind perennial champions Bayern Munich, the Ruhr side also trail flying newcomers RB Leipzig and surprise packages 1899 Hoffenheim, Cologne and Hertha BSC. Fifteen points from nine matchdays see them level with presumed relegation candidates Eintracht Frankfurt and SC Freiburg.

At the same point last season, in head coach Thomas Tuchel's maiden campaign at the Westfalenstadion, Dortmund were seven points adrift from the Bavarian giants, but they had won 20 themselves, good for second place at the time.

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They would run away from the other 16 teams in the league, ending up with 78 points, a whopping 18 ahead of Bayer Leverkusen in third place and 26 ahead of Schalke in the first UEFA Europa League spot.

Solid performances in the UEFA Champions League, where Dortmund will qualify for the round of 16 with a win over Sporting CP on Wednesday at home, have covered up any talk of a real crisis for the time being, but there can be no two ways about it: The Black and Yellows are not living up to expectations so far this season.

The injuries play their part in that, of course. Ahead of the season, Bleacher Report identified depth as the team's biggest strength. It is a strength that has been put to a thorough test in the first 15 matches across all competitions.

With experienced players missing, the team's many youngsters were forced into action more frequently than anyone anticipated. Teething problems naturally ensued, with new signings Ousmane Dembele and Emre Mor highlighting areas to improve with at-times maddening performances.

The club's self-developed teenagers, namely Christian Pulisic, Felix Passlack and, more recently, Jakob Bruun Larsen have largely done well but can obviously not perform at the highest level every three or four days during a hectic run of games.

That said, there were still enough veterans on the pitch in all the games Dortmund failed to win or even only play somewhat decently in. The last few weeks have shown that players such as long-serving right-back Lukasz Piszczek and midfielder Shinji Kagawa may not have much of a future in Dortmund going by their current level of performances.

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ESPN FC's John Duerden discussed the possibility of Kagawa moving to his home country in the January transfer window, judging that the playmaker "has struggled to recapture the form that made him a star in his first German stint from 2010 to 2012."

The Black and Yellows have received little from those two and only inconsistent efforts from other more experienced players. Mario Gotze, for one, is improving a tad slowly during his second stint with the club, even though things are clearly on the up.

Chances are Dortmund will get better with the return of players such as Raphael Guerreiro, Andre Schurrle and Marc Bartra, but an improved personnel situation is unlikely to serve as a miracle cure for the team's surprisingly manifold number of issues.

It is quite obvious that the wholesale changes the summer transfer window brought have had a bigger impact than most would have anticipated.

Losing team captain Mats Hummels, midfield mastermind Ilkay Gundogan and scoring machine Henrikh Mkhitaryan in one summer was always going to present unique challenges, but the feeling was that Dortmund did as best they could to offset the losses with eight signings.

So far, however, they are ailing in all three areas where they lost their star players.

Without Hummels, the defence tends to look unorganised—which, to be fair, also has to do with ever-changing pairings in the middle and on the wings due to injuries.

Without Hummels and Gundogan, the build-up play seems to lack purpose. Dortmund still have an inordinate amount of possession, but most of it comes down to meticulous passing in areas where the opponent has nothing to fear. 

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Raphael Honigstein bemoaned "a lack of ideas in possession" in a piece for the Guardian, explaining that "some observers [are] longing for the more helter-skelter approach seen under Jurgen Klopp."

Without Mkhitaryan, the attack is far more predictable, as no one has emerged who can decide games with one stroke of genius, something the Armenian did a number of times during a fantastic last campaign under Tuchel.

Now, there is hope that the 43-year-old can settle his defence much like he did last season, when Dortmund conceded 23 goals in the first half of the Bundesliga season and only 11 in the second. Even though Matthias Ginter has played well for the most part, the Black and Yellows started shipping goals when he replaced the injured Bartra in September. 

And between Reus, Schurrle, Dembele, Mor, Pulisic and striker Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, there is an abundance of quality in attack. Dortmund will score goals against most teams.

The tender spot in midfield, however, is a problem that will likely bother Tuchel and his team throughout the season.

Even though Guerreiro has impressed in a midfield role, Gonzalo Castro has found a better consistency in his performances, Gotze is improving and the club's transfer business has rightfully received a lot of praise, as this writer argued in an earlier piece, Dortmund's failure to properly replace Gundogan could be the team's downfall this season.

Sebastian Rode, a €12 million signing from Bayern, the only experienced central midfielder the Ruhr side added in the summer, has all the makings of a failed acquisition. The 26-year-old's reluctance to take any risk in his passing has made him the butt of many a joke from both fans and analysts.

If he is to play a significant role, it may well have to come as a wing-back, for Dortmund suffer too much when he plays a central role in midfield—at least in games where they dominate possession.

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It is fair to ask whether spending a total of €64 million on Rode and attackers Dembele, Mor and Schurrle was the best way to appropriate transfer funds in the summer if it meant the, arguably, most important player in Tuchel's system, Gundogan, would not be replaced.

It is entirely possible that this complaint will look ridiculous in no time, of course. That is, if Guerreiro keeps impressing in his midfield role and the youngsters come along nicely.

For now, though, Dortmund's problems on the pitch, most of which can be located in the team's midfield, have as much or more to do with the transfer window as they do with the injury crisis.

Pointing solely to the latter and expecting things to magically get better when most of the missing players return is a poor strategy. Do so at your own peril. You may well be in for a rude awakening.

Lars Pollmann also writes for The Yellow Wall. You can follow him on Twitter.