And to be honest: After being knocked out of the Europa League by Krasnodar and the unlucky 3-2 defeat at Dortmund, there is no desire for another black and red hangover. Indeed, there is real hunger for another three points to be won at the BayArena, this time with a decent amount of carnival confetti on hand – time for a home win! Here are 04 facts on #B04SCF…
There has not been much for the Werkself to smile about in recent fixtures at the BayArena during carnival: 0-2 against Hertha, 0-2 against Mainz, 0-0 against Bayern, 4-5 against Wolfsburg and 1-0 against Mainz is the meagre return from the past five seasons. Therefore, it is fair to assume the Werkself pirates will be seething with anger on Saturday as they shout out "Three times Leverkusen ahoy" as they attempt to board the white and red three-master of SC Freiburg. As one thing is certain: The sailors from the Breisgau have not really enjoyed much success at the BayArena recently. The last five visits to Leverkusen have seen the team from Baden pick up just one point with a 1-1 draw in 2016/17. The other four games resulted in defeat with one goal for and ten against. So we hope that Freiburg are the right opponents for the carnival home game.
Freiburg have scored 34 goals in the last 23 league games. Almost half of those have come in the last eight games. Nils Petersen, Luca Waldschmidt and Co. have found the back of the net 15 times during that period. Last weekend, after a run of four games without defeat, Freiburg ran riot at home to FC Augsburg with a 5-1 victory, which is the biggest winning margin for almost ten years. Respect – as Germany coach Jogi Löw would definitely say. But: The Bosz Boys are no slouches in terms of scoring goals. Definitely not! The last 15 goals for the Werkself, from Kevin Volland, Kai Havertz, Julian Brandt (three each), Leon Bailey (2), Lucas Alario, Wendell, Karim Bellarabi and Jonathan Tah, were netted in the last five Bundesliga fixtures – no other team has scored as often during that run of games. That is an average of three black and red goals per game. To put it in carnival language:"Mir donn et immer immer widder!" (We're doing it again and again).
The game between SC Freiburg and Bayer 04 brings together two of the most hard-working teams in the league: The Werkself lead the rankings with a total of 2,792 kilometres covered followed by the Streich team (2,779 km). The Black and Reds run an average of 121.4 kilometres per game and that is almost one kilometre more than the White and Reds. A closer examination of the figures does reveal a small difference: Bayer 04 prefer to run in possession (on average 62.2 km) rather than without the ball at their feet (59.2 km), Freiburg cover more ground when the opposition have the ball (64.8 km) and less when they are in possession (56 km). That is unlikely to change on Saturday. At the same time, there is the question of which team will have the better run of the ball ?
In terms of running better. We've already mentioned that the away trips to the BayArena have not been much fun for Freiburg recently. But not that SCF have gone three games without scoring against the Werkself (0-0, 0-4, 0-0). The Sport Club have not found it harder up front against any other team in the league. At least one Werkself player will be happy to read this paragraph: Lukas Hradecky. The Finnish keeper with the number one on his back, who joined Bayer 04 from Eintracht Frankfurt in the summer, has not been on the winning side in any of his five previous meetings with SC Freiburg (3 draws, 2 defeats; a total of four goals conceded). Time for a change. Particularly at this time of fun and frolics in the Rhineland it would be good to see Freiburg draw a blank after 90 minutes… Just because of the black and red carnival haul. So the maxim for the Werkself is: "Go for it!"
Match information:
Previous result: 0-0 (A)
Referee: Guido Winkmann (Kerken)
Weather forecast: 13 degrees, drizzle
Live on TV at: Sky
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