Borussia Dortmund returned to winning ways today as they dominated their third game of the season against a travelling SV Darmstadt 98.

The nature of the victory has put to bed doubts of Thomas Tuchel's side after they failed to win against newly promoted RB Leipzig last weekend. German international Gonzalo Castro was undeniably the hero of the game, scoring two goals and setting up another which set up the yellow-blacks to win by six goals against the Lilies.

Sulu re-injured, Tuchel rests big guns.

As always line-ups came in an hour before the game, which gave an indication as to how the teams would set up tactically. Tuchel rested both Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, Mario Gotze and Marc Bartra after both players played in Wednesday night’s game in the UEFA Champions League against Legia Warsaw. Matthias Ginter made his first start in five months at the Signal Iduna Park, he filled the void at centre-back.

SV Darmstadt’s Team captain Aytac Sulu was re-injured in the warm-up before the game despite being named in the initial starting 11, Jerome Gondorf also missed out due to injury, which meant that Immanuel Höhn took his place in a three back alongside Alexander Milosevic and Leon Guwara.

Dortmund dominant, Darmstadt left watching

Darmstadt were caught by the lightning fast start made by Dortmund, central-midfielder Gonzalo Castro continued his good goal scoring form, notching the first goal of the game inside 10 minutes with a solid finish from an Ousmane Dembele cross.

The visitors were then forced to play the majority of the first half on the back foot, and the pace of play was something that the Lilies continued to struggle with throughout as Meier’s side had just 19% of the ball overall in the first half.

The Darmstadt head coach took no prisoners as the half progressed, last week’s goal scorer Sandro Sirigu was brought on for Anis Ben-Hatira in the 34th minute as the Tunisian struggled to have any sort of impact on the game.

Much the same in the second half

Despite Meier’s tactical efforts, the game continued to be dominated by Borussia Dortmund as the second half got under way. The second goal of the game came just two minutes after the break, with Colombian international Adrian Ramos picking up on a parried save by Michael Esser and rifling the ball into the back of the net from an acute angle.

The flowing supremacy continued on for Thomas Tuchel's side and it wasn’t long until Dortmund scored a third, Christian Pulisic slotted in from the right side after Raphael Guerreiro put the ball across goal, leaving the goal completely open for the United Statesman.

Darmstadt’s situation was made even worse when defensive midfielder Peter Niemeyer saw a second yellow in the 57th minute. Leaving the visitors chasing the game with 10 players on the pitch.

Castro, Sebastian Rode and Emre Mor put the nail in the coffin as the latter two scored their first goals for Dortmund after coming on from the bench in the second half.

With 22 shots and six goals in total, The game finished 6-0 in what turned out to be an easily won match for the yellow-blacks.