Miscellaneous: The background to the miracle of Leverkusen – 35 years on

In a time where there were no mobile phones, I had my first cordless phone, my hair was permed, the players wore sexy short shorts and there were positions known as libero as we prepared for the new season. There were two points for a win in the Bundesliga and there was a maximum of two substitutes per game. I can't exactly remember the goalkeeper rules back then but I definitely wasn't allowed to pick up a back pass.

To explain 1988, we have to go back a year to the 1986 – 87 season. In that season Bayer were league leaders for the first time on matchday three and remained so for another two games, we beat the great FC Bayern Munich 3-0 on matchday 12 at their ground, went back to the top of the table and finally ended the first half of the season with an impressive third place just two points behind Bayern and league leaders HSV. Things don't go so well in the second half of the season. We lost more and more ground and dropped to sixth place. That was not good enough to qualify for the UEFA Cup. We were reliant on HSV beating second division Stuttgart Kickers in the cup final. Thankfully they did that on 88 minutes with a free kick from Manni Kaltz and then an own goal for the final scoreline of 3-1. So we again qualified for the UEFA Cup as in the year before

We had three new players for the 1987/88 season: Ralf Falkenmayer, Klaus Täuber and Andrzej Buncol. Knut Reinhardt and Jean-Pierre de Keyser from the second team were awarded professional contracts and Bernd Dreher moved up to the first team squad as an amateur.

In the season preview from Kicker we were predicted to finish in the top five. I quote: "The Bayer players will have to manage that: They finished sixth twice in succession. The fans would definitely not be happy with a hat-trick. Standing still is often the same dropping back. Expectations have definitely risen. Transfer spending in the sum of over three million for the players Täuber, Falkenmayer and Buncol has played its part in that." Three million Deutschmarks, not euros. I admit: The Bundesliga season was poor. Very poor. Somehow we never really get going. But the UEFA Cup matches were all the better for that. And that's what it was all about in the following months. Our first UEFA Cup match was on 15 September 1987 so will look at the two matches against Austria Vienna next month.

The first Bundesliga matches were in August. A 1-0 win in the opener at the Ulrich Haberland Stadium against Waldhof Mannheim was followed by two draws. Then comes the Mönchengladbach week where we lost 2-1 twice at the Bökelberg in the league and in the cup. In the week between the two Gladbach games there was also a 3-1 home defeat against Eintracht Frankfurt and the atmosphere under the Bayer Cross was really bad in August 1987.