Tight turnaround leaves Gladbach trio questionable for the weekend
Three Gladbach players sustained injury in Wednesday's 0-2 loss to Manchester City in the Champions League. Ramy Bensebaini, Christoph Kramer, and Jonas Hofmann are all questionable ahead of the weekend fixture against second-place RB Leipzig.
Matters aren't set to get much easier for the foals of Nordrhein-westfallen. Marco Rose's team will be put their paces this weekend against Julian Nagelsmann's streaking Leipzig, then must face the West Prussian rivals Rose had committed to coaching next year in the Pokal midweek.
At a Thursday presser, Gladbach's current head-coach confirmed that the recent UCL match in Budapest "took a lot of energy" out of his players and all but guaranteed that rotations were coming. German national team midfielder Jonas Hofmann looks to be a doubt looks very doubtful after suffering a knee knock and being subbed off late against City.
Hofmann's fellow Nationalelf player was able to complete the full 90 minutes, yet hobbled frequently with an apparent, though not easily identifiable, muscle strain of sorts. Fullback Ramy Bensebaini also didn't appear to be 100 percent fit after a collision earlier in the match.
"With all three of them, we'll have to see if the weekend affords them enough recovery time," Rose conceded, "[after the Champions' League match], we'll have to bring in fresh players anyway."
The team's general level of play over the past few weeks has been especially poor. A string of three league winless matches means that the UCL defeat leaves the foals unsuccessful in four matches on the trot.
It should nevertheless be noted that the foals were undefeated in 2021 when the streak began and have beaten both Bayern and Dortmund in recent weeks.