Borussia Dortmund boss makes ‘strong’ Newcastle United claim - and name checks Man Utd & Arsenal

Borussia Dortmund boss Edin Terzic says he needs no reminder of how strong Newcastle United are ahead of tomorrow night’s Champions League clash (kick-off 5:45pm).

A fortnight after Dortmund won 1-0 on Tyneside, the two sides meet again at the Signal Iduna Park in what is likely to be a pivotal game in the group. The Bundesliga outfit currently sit second in Group F, level on points (4) with the Magpies.

“We don’t need any warning about how strong Newcastle is,” said Terzic. “They beat Manchester United and Arsenal. We are ready for tomorrow. We expect an offensive, intense game. Newcastle press very high, especially at the start of the game. We need a good start and have to stay focused until the end.

“We know we are playing at home. In order to advance, we have to win our home games.

“The lesson from the Newcastle game was that we can compete at this level with top performances. It was a wild opening phase, but we still held up against Newcastle’s attack.

“In the first half we played a very good game, both defensively and offensively. That was no longer the case in the second half. We want to do even better tomorrow.”

Dortmund are hoping to bounce back from Saturday’s heavy defeat to bitter rivals Bayern Munich.

Terzic continued: “Saturday was very disappointing. We had big plans. On Sunday we were very honest with each other and discussed the mistakes in order to put a tick in the box. Now the next task awaits us tomorrow.”

“We not only want to learn from Saturday’s game, but we also want to take last season as a warning. We lost against Wolfsburg after a set piece in November and experienced something similar in Gladbach three days later. That shouldn’t happen to us this year. We want to learn from last season and do better again as quickly as possible.”