Klopp pleased with new boy Papastathopoulos

Sokratis Papastathopoulos will be trying to deny his former club Werder Bremen three points when he lines up against them for Borussia Dortmund.

The Greece international defender moved between the two clubs this summer and, after breaking into the team for a 2-1 win over Eintracht Braunschweig last weekend, he will be confident of featuring once again on Friday.

"He's a very good football and a real fighter," his new coach Jurgen Klopp said. "He loves being in the centre of the defence and he feels very happy there.

"He's also getting increasingly used to our tactical systems."

However, Klopp stopped short of assuring the 25-year-old a berth alongside Mats Hummels at the heart of his defence.

Neven Subotic was rested in Braunschweig and Klopp has no qualms about rotating his defensive plans.

"That is the ideal situation" he said. "We have one very good player on the bench and another very good player playing.

"We always said that we wanted to spread the burden."

That is particularly important this week with Dortmund back in action five days after their last game.

"We spent Monday and Tuesday recovering, then we trained properly again on Wednesday," Klopp said at a press conference.

"It's been a short week. Next week, since we play on Sunday, is a relatively long one and I expect us to make progress in training then."

Now could therefore be a good time for Bremen to meet the Westphalians.

"I hope we manage to keep Dortmund busy for 90 minutes," said Bremen coach Robin Dutt. "I've got nothing against another 1-0 at the moment, not even against Dortmund.

"We are coming up against a really good calibre with Dortmund."

Ilkay Gundogan will be absent for Dortmund due to the injury he picked up on international duty just over a week ago.