BVB's Revolving Doors

So, Thomas Doll has become Borussia Dortmund's third manager of the season; the coach charged with the job of getting BVB out of the mire. Time will tell if this is the right choice for the club. Someone in the bowels of Signal Iduna Park must think that appointing a man who took Hamburg to the Champions League in one season and then bottom of the Bundesliga in the next is a good move.

When one looks at the current situation in those terms, Doll and Dortmund look well suited. The new coach's record over the last two seasons with HSV is very much in tune with the last decade of BVB's history. Champions League winners in 1997, Dortmund have been on a steady slide through mediocrity, albeit via a championship title in 2002, towards Bundesliga oblivion for the past ten years.

And while having three coaches in one season hints at a management board with an extremely itchy trigger finger, for the Borussia Dortmund's long-suffering fans, the game of musical chairs is nothing new.

Dortmund looked to be cultivating a period of domination under Ottmar Hitzfeld at the tail-end of the 90s. Bundesliga champions in 1995 and 1996 and European champions the following year, BVB were positioning themselves to be the team to beat as the century came to a close and the new millennium promised much.

However, after tasting both Bundesliga and Champions League success, Hitzfeld jumped ship and BVB tottered on the precipice of a lean spell during which the club discovered an unsettling penchant for panicking over dubious coaching appointments.

BVB look to Italian

While Hitzfeld was taking a break to consider the implications of joining BVB's great rivals Bayern Munich, Dortmund brought in the Italian Nevio Scala as team coach. After tasting numerous European successes as coach of Parma, Scala appeared to be the man to consolidate Dortmund's position as a continental force. It started well, with the Italian taking Hitzfeld's team to Tokyo to win the 1997 World Club Championship.

But when faced with molding the team in his own image and bringing the Bundesliga title back to Dortmund, Scala's European expertise couldn't be translated into domestic success. The Italian lasted one season before being replaced by German Michael Skibbe.

When seen in the context of BVB's rotating-door mentality, Skibbe could be considered a stalwart of the Dortmund dugout. Holding the top job for almost two years was no mean feat considering how jittery the club's hierarchy was getting in its search for glory.

Despite improving Scala's position of tenth in the league, a fourth-place finish in the 1998/99 season wasn't enough. Skibbe lasted just four months of the following campaign before being replaced by Austrian Bernd Krauss.

Krauss and Lattek barely given time to unpack

The former Borussia Mönchengladbach coach barely had time to adjust his office chair before he was joining Skibbe at the job center. Just two months after taking the job, Krauss was handing the reins to Udo Lattek.

A coach with a European and UEFA Cup to his name as well as eight Bundesliga titles, Lattek at least had the credentials on paper to bring domestic and international glory back to an increasingly success-starved club. However, his return to Dortmund after coaching them for two seasons at the start of the 80s was an extremely short and far-from-happy one. Lattek passed on the poisoned chalice after just two months in charge.

By the time Matthias Sammer came along in 2000, Dortmund hadn't lifted any silverware for three years and hadn't tasted Bundesliga success in four. The former BVB midfielder and European Player of the Year, who had enjoyed the club's most successful spell under Hitzfeld as a player, was now the man who carried the hopes of the club as coach.

Sammer brings glory -- and then leaves

It was an indication of how much the club cherished him that he was allowed two fallow years after taking over before success eventually returned to the Westfalenstadion. Dortmund won the title in 2002, eight years after they were last crowned champions, and followed that up by narrowly losing in the UEFA Cup and German Cup finals in 2003.

But Sammer's failure in the Champions League and inability to repeat his one championship success saw him ousted in 2004, leaving the hot seat free for Dutchman Bert van Marwijk.

In the following year, Dortmund teetered on the brink of bankruptcy -- a financial crisis brought on by poor management and the failure to advance in the lucrative Champions League.

Van Marwijk oversees fire sale

After selling the naming rights of the Westfalenstadion to the Signal Iduna insurance company, the club narrowly survived but confidence was shaken. Van Marwijk oversaw two seasons of mediocrity and the sale of the clubs most precious playing assets -- Czech pair Tomas Rosicky and Jan Koller -- before vacating the job in December 2006.

His replacement, Jürgen Röber, soon got a taste of the winds of change that regularly blow through the corridors of Signal Iduna Park. His announcement that the BVB job was no longer for him may have come as a surprise to many, but the ushering out of Röber after just three months and the ushering in of Doll will have raised few eye-brows on the terraces adored in black-and-yellow.