Why I'm not so sure about Dortmund is not only because of their performance in the Bundesliga. But you can compare the opponents that Dortmund faced in the Champions League in the qualifying round were not strong enough and favored teams. Maybe only Madrid and Barcelona were their opponents from strong teams. And Dortmund lost to both of them.
Facing Sporting I think Dortmund could also have problems. Sporting is not a strong team if you look at their performance in the Champions League, both of them might show a tight game. It will definitely be an interesting match.
I don't think so. While Borussia Dortmund has had a series of mixed performances this season, it doesn’t change the fact that they are still a stronger side than Sporting CP in the Champions League. Sporting have equally struggled especially since the departure of their Ruben Amorim to Manchester United. Although the match will be tightly contested as Sporting will have home advantage in the first leg, Dortmund still has the quality to edge them out over two legs provided they find some consistency in their performance.
It is obvious that Dortmund isn't having a good season, and they will not be winning it here neither. It's already a huge achievement for them that they are out of the group stages, even being top 24 is a huge deal for them and this is enough. They just lost to Stuttgart too I believe, so there isn't really anything that we need to take a look at right now, it is not really that complicated to begin with. Sporting has won the league so many times in a row and I am guessing that we are going to end up with much more issues on the long term as well.
Because of this, we need to make sure that we bet on the right team for this game. Sporting is much better, far better team and they are going to end up with the win here, because Dortmund has been terrible all season long. After the managerial change, they didn't get any better neither, they are still a bad team and I do not think that they are going to change anything at any given moment neither.