Why are people taking her of all posts as representation of what the Dortmund support thinks?
Januzaj certainly had short comings with us, most of them were of tactical nature. This did not surprise most people, though. By the time he joined us the season was already running. We played a total of 30 games in the first season half, meaning a lot of English weeks and little time for actual training. It is always a challenge coming into a team under these circumstances. For a 20 year old loan player? Even harder.
His sub appearances were for the most part decent, he brought in impulses and tried to create space for the other players. His starts were less impressive but here it should be noted that his starts were usually in formations which were pretty far away from our strongest XI, it were the games where we rested several key players.
Januzaj faced two (fairly predictable) big problems:
1. competition: Given his tactical short comings he was not an option for the central positions as misunderstandings and mistakes would have been far too costly in our system so that left the two wing positions. On one side played our best performer of this season and one of the league´s best players Mkhitaryan, No other player had as much as impact on our play than him. Outside a few games he was rested, he was essential for us and always played. The other one is the team´s star player Marco Reus who even without top form and troubled with minor injuries still is a very productive player, being the teams second best goal scorer. The first back up option became Gonzalo Castro. Now people can argue that Januzaj should have been able to get above him in the ranking, but not only had the former the full pre season with the team, is a seasoned Bundesliga professional, was Leverkusens most consistent midfielder in the last two seasons and our biggest signing in the Summer. His integration was always more important than Januzaj´s, which leads to the second problem.
2. status as loan player: We did not treat him like a talent at Dortmund, because we never viewed his development as very important. He was a transfer for squad depth, a fringe player for situations where we would needed his services. Unfortunately for him, this was very rarely the case. At no point in the season we had more than one offensive player out with an injury, which meant outside the games where the starters were rested in general Januzaj never had the realistic chance to start.
There is one thing I want to say with all clarity. If Januzaj would have been a "real" Dortmund player, we would have never let him go after half a season without a single proper training camp. This is not as simple as not being good enough for us, this decision is way more about giving two of our own extremely promising academy players the game time Januzaj would have gotten in the rest of the season to develop them, because we have actually reason to do so as they are the potential future of the club. This is right now a risky choice as they are completely unproven on senior level in contrast to Januzaj, Given the amount of money we invested into our youth development in the last years and the promise both of these boys show, giving them a real perspective is still the right choise in my book and probably also better for Januzaj´s own career.
