Dortmund look impressive at home - so why can't they win any away games this season?

Nuri Sahin's team remain unbeaten at the Westfalenstadion this season after drawing 1-1 with Bayern Munich, but continue to be let down by poor performances on the road.

The last seven days couldn't have gone better for Nuri Sahin. Following a convincing 4-0 win over Freiburg to keep the wolf from the door, Dortmund then went to Croatia and comfortably dispatched Dinamo Zagreb to climb to fourth in the Champions League’s, eh, league (?). Then, as if that wasn’t impressive enough, the young head coach welcomed high-flying Bayern Munich to the Westfalenstadion and duly snatched a point from his ambitious foe to maintain a truly remarkable unbeaten run at home this season.

While it wasn’t pretty for much of the match, Dortmund certainly deserved a point against Bayern and over the course of the 90 minutes Sahin showed a degree of confidence and tactical acumen that had been sorely missing earlier in the season. Unlike the 5-2 defeat to Real Madrid back in October - where Dortmund had gone two goals up, only for Sahin to substitute his entire front line early in the second half and subsequently watch his team fall apart - the 36-year-old coach held his nerve by instead making like-for-like replacements and was ultimately rewarded for it. Where Sahin had previously looked like a rabbit caught in the bright lights of the Santiago Bernabéu, Saturday’s clash featured an emboldened head coach who was shouting and directing his team through every passage of play, like the great German maestros of yesteryear conducting their orchestras.

However, that’s not to suggest that Sahin is entirely out of the woods just yet. While few would doubt that Dortmund seem content to go toe-to-toe with just about any side with the backing of the Yellow Wall, the same certainly couldn’t be said of their away form. So far this season Sahin’s side have won just one point from five away games in the Bundesliga and for all the good their fantastic performances at home are doing to galvanise fans and keep critics at bay, this Dortmund side won’t get anywhere this season if they can’t figure out how to win games on the road. So why are Sahin’s team so bad in away games and how do they fix their major problems?