No joy in friendly against Lazio

"I accept responsibility for the result and the performance of my players. We've worked very hard this week," declared head coach Heiko Herrlich. "Today you saw the players were simply tired and done in. We lacked freshness and we invited the opponents onto us – the first two goals were both gifts. And given the weather conditions it was easy for the Romans to sit back, close down space and wait to play on the break," added the 45-year-old.

Lars Bender and Jonathan Tah return

The game did not start that badly for the Werkself – also because Lars Bender was back on the pitch after a long time out on the sidelines and he appeared for the first time alongside his twin brother Sven in a Bayer 04 line-up. Jonathan Tah also celebrated his comeback.

In a lively encounter, the two sides initially competed on equal terms. The Herrlich team missed out on a great start when Lars Bender put Admir Mehmedi through but his shot from close range was blocked by the Roman defence on nine minutes. The Italians were more threatening in their moves after the first 15 minutes. Bayer 04 keeper Bernd Leno made a fine save to keep out Lazio striker Felipe Anderson on 14 minutes. Shortly after that it was the former Dortmund player Ciro Immobile who made no mistake as he put Lazio 1-0 up on 19 minutes. The Romans had their strongest phase of the game at this point and created further chances.

Volland hits the bar

The Werkself came back into the game on the half-hour mark. But all efforts went unrewarded. Typical of that was a powerful free kick from 20 yards out, taken by birthday boy Kevin Volland, – he was 25 on Sunday – but the ball hit the underside of the bar. With four minutes to go before half-time, Anderson exploited a mistake in the Bayer 04 build-up play to win the ball and go on to double the lead. The two sides went into the break with Lazio leading 2-0.

Heiko Herrlich made eight changes at the break – with only Leno, Wendell and Volland from the original line-up staying on. Despite that, the Werkself had the upper hand while the Italians concentrated on defensive work. Leverkusen attacked but were unable to find their way through a tightly packed defence. It was the opposite for Lazio with Immobile ending a counter-attack with a fine curled shot into the Bayer 04 net that left Leno helpless and made the score 3-0 on 54 minutes.

Late strike from Yurchenko

The Werkself refused to give up. It was clear they were determined to come back from that latest setback even if not every pass found a team-mate and the legs were getting heavier and heavier. The commitment shown by the Werkself was rewarded in the end when Vladlen Yurchenko scored a consolation goal on 90 minutes after good work by Leon Bailey. The referee blew for full-time straight after the restart.

After the game, the Werkself set off on the team bus to Salzburg Airport to start the journey home. The players will have two days off before pre-season preparations resume on Wednesday.

Bayer 04: Leno – Henrichs (Kohr 46’), Tah (Dragovic 46’), S. Bender (Ramalho 46’), Wendell (Bednarczyk 65’) – L. Bender (Baumgartlinger 46’), Kampl (46. Yurchenko) – Mehmedi (Bellarabi 46’), Brandt (Bailey 46’) – Havertz (Pohjanpalo 46’), Volland (Schreck 65’)