Friday night, floodlights, Mönchengladbach. When Marvin Ducksch thinks about the upcoming match at Borussia, good memories come to mind. Last season, SV Werder firstly turned on the style with a goalfest in the home game, before Ducksch grabbed his first Bundesliga brace at BORUSSIA-PARK. “That gives energy to not just me but the whole team,” said the Germany international, who was directly involved in four goals in the last two games against Gladbach.
Moreover, the 2-0 home win against the in-form Augsburg has given the Green-Whites self-confidence. SVW handed Augsburg their first loss under their new head coach Jess Thorup and kept their third clean sheet of the season in the process. “We can really build on the performances from the last few weeks, apart from the game in Stuttgart,” Ducksch said. “We’ve always kept working and haven’t let anything from outside affect us.”
Ole Werner’s side are yet to manage two consecutive wins this season. Following their first goal of the season from a corner and Niklas Stark’s first goal for the club, Werder want to back that up with another win next time out. “We need to continue to be brave because we don’t have to hide from anyone,” Werder’s top scorer emphasised. “We put in a really good team performance against Augsburg and our body language was great. We want to carry on from our good performance from the Augsburg game against our upcoming opponent.”
Even though Borussia went through a bit of an upheaval in the summer following a change of head coach from Daniel Farke to Gerardo Seoane, the squad is not entirely unrecognisable. Lars Stindl (now Karlsruher SC), Marcus Thuram (now Inter Milan) and Jonas Hofmann (now Bayer Leverkusen) are the only three players who appeared in the 2-2 draw last March who are no longer with the Foals ahead of tomorrow’s encounter.
“They still have a lot of quality in their ranks and, just like us, have become more consistent in the last few weeks,” analysed Ducksch. “I’m expecting an even game, where we want to be the better team and make fewer mistakes.” And Werder’s number 7 very much knows where the goal is in Mönchengladbach.
