Hoeness: "Dortmund can play incredibly well"

Sebastian Hoeness on…

...the personnel situation: "Unfortunately, Håvard Nordtveit will not be able to play against Borussia Dortmund. There hasn't been much change within the squad otherwise. Dennis Geiger is slowly getting there. He may be able to return to team training in the next two weeks."

...the opposition: "They boast great footballing ability and have a lot of individual quality. The team is capable of playing incredibly well. They're not managing to show that consistently on the pitch at the current moment. In addition, they have struggled for efficiency recently. But despite all that, they're a hugely strong opponent and one of the top three teams in the league."

…the meeting with Dortmund: "We want to be present from the off and show the right desire. To that end, we will need to be efficient in front of goal. Then Dortmund might start to doubt themselves in the current situation."

…the impact of the weather: "We're training slightly later because the undersoil heating is struggling in the current temperatures. In addition, we try to avoid having the players standing around for long periods. This primarily impacts set-piece training. On my journey to the training ground, it was -12 degrees Celsius. You have to take that into account in training."

…the match against Eintracht Frankfurt: "So far, I've been very pleased with the reaction in training. We were disappointed with the result. We created too few goalscoring chances in the first 45 minutes; that changed in the second half."

The opposition's form:

The form chart shows that BVB have only one win in their last five Bundesliga games. That run has seen Dortmund drop to sixth place in the table, 16 points behind current league leaders FC Bayern Munich. Last weekend, Edin Terzic's team were beaten 2-1 away to SC Freiburg.

Head-to-head record:

TSG were unlucky to lose 1-0 in the reverse fixture. It was their first defeat to Dortmund in the Bundesliga since 16 December 2017. Since then, TSG have three wins and two draws. However, BVB have the better overall record in the Bundesliga: they have nine wins to Hoffenheim's seven, while there have also been nine draws.

Match facts and statistics »