Union climb to European spot after Doekhi’s brace against winless Gladbach | OneFootball

Borussia Mönchengladbach are going through yet another transformation with the sporting director Roland Virkus leaving his post earlier this week. However, things are not improving on the pitch as they went two goals behind inside the first 26 minutes.

With Virkus’ replacement, Rouven Schröder, present in the stands, he witnessed the shaky defense exposed by Union’s energetic start. In particular, Derrick Köhn caused them all kinds of trouble in the wing.

Yet, none of Danilho Doekhi’s goals directly involved the new signing. The center-back played every minute last season, but he only had one goal to his name. However, he finally found his goal-scoring touch that we've seen in his debut Bundesliga season.

First, the former Netherlands U21 international headed home Christopher Trimmel’s corner-kick. Then, he was alert to capitalize when Ilyas Ansah’s sensational effort rebounded off the woodwork to score his tenth Bundesliga goal.

Gladbach nearly gave an immediate response both times, through summer signings Jens Castrop and Philipp Sander. The visitors get back into the game thanks to a brilliant linkup play involving two other newcomers.

Yannik Engelhardt assisted Haris Tabakovic’s third goal of the season in a move by two players who were plying their trades in 2. Bundesliga last term. Before half-time, Steffen Baumgart had to substitute the evergreen Trimmel after his rift with Castrop resulted in both players being cautioned.

Despite their decent end to the first-half, Gladbach failed to keep that up after the restart. And, shortly after, South Korean international Castrop had to depart the game for a similar concern despite his solid performance in the night.

The interim coach, Eugen Polanski, introduced four substitutions at once, including the return of Franck Honorat and Gio Reyna. Seconds before that, Tabakovic put the ball in the net once again, but he was clearly in an offside position.

Against the run of play, the Bosnian striker had another great chance, but his attempt was wide of the mark. Then, we saw what must have been a third substitution that happened purely to avoid a second yellow card when the relentless Köhn was replaced by the Germany U21 international Tom Rothe.

Similar to the first-half, Glabdach started to have their best spell in the last 20 minutes. However, their plan hit another blow from yet another set-piece opportunity for Union Berlin. Instead of being subbed off for seeing a yellow card, Rani Khedira scored with a beautiful strike after Union’s own Marvin Friedrich seemed to clear the initial danger.

Union Berlin will be involved in another Friday night action next weekend when they travel to Bremen. After that, they will have to fend off the new cup specialists, Arminia Bielefeld. Gladbach will host the mighty Bayern Munich in search of their first league win before entertaining Karlsruhe in Pokal action.