This article is part of Football FanCast's Opinion series, which provides analysis, insight and opinion on any issue within the beautiful game, from Paul Pogba's haircuts to League Two relegation battles...

The situation at Borussia Dortmund is nowhere near what it was just a season ago.

Last year, they were going toe-to-toe with Bayern Munich for the Bundesliga crown and came extremely close to snatching the title away from the Bavarians.

This season, however, they seem to be suffering from a hangover that is making them look like a shadow of their former selves.

They are currently sitting in sixth place in the table and have been scrapping through the campaign, barely securing a point for their troubles against Pandeborn in a 3-3 draw after going 3-0 down and, of course, suffering that humiliating 4-0 defeat at the hands of their arch-rivals, Bayern.

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But the former Bayern Munich and Inter midfielder, Lothar Matthaus, thinks he knows what they are missing and knows who can fix that (Sky Germany via Goal):

"Their biggest shortcoming is, in my opinion, that they simply have too few winners. They lack the certain something that you need to be successful – greed for success. Both [Can and Mandzukic] have this absolute will to win something and have already done so at national and international level. Neither of them are appreciated by Juve as they would like to be and I know that that are ready for a transfer and are available for a reasonable price. If I was at Dortmund, I would get on the plane to Turin straight away and try to sign them both."

Of course, Matthaus is very much right on the money with that and as he says, both players could be leaving Juventus in the near future and putting some experience and proven will to fight and win could do Dortmund a world of good.

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Interestingly enough, however, they are not the only ones that seem to think so.

Ole Gunnar Solskjaer's troops over at Manchester United have a similar idea and they were heavily linked with Mandzukic even before Dortmund were mentioned.

The Red Devils seemingly need someone who's a proven winner, like Mandzukic or Edin Dzeko, who was also said to be in the race and even ahead of the Croat as per some reports, to give their relatively young forward line a boost.

They may have the likes of Marcus Rahsford, Anthony Martial and Mason Greenwood emerging on the scene, but none of them are proven stars who can be trusted to perform on the biggest stage when the times comes.

United are in a similar situation to Dortmund as they are struggling to keep up with other big names in the league and could definitely use someone of Mandzukic's calibre.

As it currently stands, these two teams could go head-to-head for his signature and could profit immensely by landing him.

In other news, Manchester United could be looking to snatch away a young pearl from Juventus' rivals, Roma.