Struggling Sevilla need to step up
Spanish underachievers Sevilla will be fearful for their Europa League survival when they face Borussia Dortmund tonight.
Dortmund are one of Europe's form teams at the moment. They've won their last five league games, including victories over Wolfsburg, Schalke and an emphatic 5-0 thrashing of Kaiserslautern. They also won their opening Europa League fixture, a difficult trip to the Ukraine, where they eventually overcame Karpaty 4-3 with a stoppage time winner from wunderkind Mario Gotze.
Now ranked as second favourites for the Bundesliga title at [5.5] Dortmund will be difficult for any team to stop, let alone one as inconsistent as Sevilla.
Sevilla surprisingly failed to qualify for the Champions League, losing 5-3 on aggregate to Sporting Braga, a team since embarrased 6-0 by Arsenal and have lost the opening game of their Europa League campaign, 1-0 at home to Paris Saint Germain.
Their lack of form has come as a surprise to most pundits as the club had managed to hold on to the much admired Luis Fabiano, Frederic Kanoute and Jesus Navas in the transfer window. They've done reasonably in La Liga, currently lying seventh, but went down 2-0 at the weekend to Hercules, resulting in coach Antonio Alvarez being replaced by Gregorio Manzano.
With PSG strongly backed to beat Karpaty on their own patch, Sevilla will need to get something from this game or they'll find themselves six points behind the two leaders. It's hard to see Dortmund rolling over though and the German trail blazers are ranked at [2.06] to win while the Spanish club are [3.9] to triumph.
Dortmund are also currently in a free scoring mood, having fired 17 goals in their five games, and nine in their three Europa League games, meaning that over 4.5 goals at [7.2] looks a very decent punt.
Borussia Dortmund v Sevilla
Kick-off: 6pm
Live on ESPN
Can Sevilla upset the form book? Or will Dortmund march on? Have your say below...
Published: 30 Sep 2010
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