2-0 to Werder Bremen - second league defeat of the season

Head coach Xabi Alonso made seven changes to his starting XI from the line-up in the 3-0 defeat against Bayern Munich in the Round of 16 first leg in the Champions League. Only Jonathan Tah, Mario Hermoso, Granit Xhaka and Amine Adli played from the start again. In front of a full house at the BayArena, the Werkself started with lots of possession and the usual confident passing game. After losing possession the first chance of the game fell to Werder Bremen – and that landed in the back of the Werkself net: Romano Schmid converted a square ball from Jens Stage to give Werder the lead (7').

Bremen lead - Garcia hits the bar

Werder Bremen remained positive after taking the lead. The Black and Reds – with more of the play as before – lacked invention up front. The first decent chance on goal for Bayer 04 only came on 26 minutes: A whipped-in, low pass from Aleix Garcia found Emiliano Buendía in the box but his shot was saved by the Werder keeper Michael Zetterer. Shortly after that Patrik Schick hit an effort just wide of the target (28'). Two minutes later, Milos Veljkovic appeared to have scored a second for Werder but the assistant referee flagged for offside. The Werkself had the last attack of the first half: Garcia hit the bar with a free kick from 17 metres out (45+1'). Half-time soon followed.

The second half started with a triple change for Leverkusen: Alonso brought on Florian Wirtz, Exequiel Palacios and Nordi Mukiele for Buendía, Xhaka and Edmond Tapsoba. Wirtz had to go off 15 minutes later after a strong challenge from Mitchell Weiser and he was replaced by Alejandro Grimaldo (59'). The second offside goal of the game followed: Oliver Burke found the back of the net with a tap-in after Lukas Hradecky saved a shot from André Silva but he was in an offside position.

black and reds up game - werder double lead

The Werkself were livelier and created some good chances. Schick just failed to connect with a low cross from Amine Adli (70') and Palacios tried twice with long-range efforts that were saved by Zetterer (72', 74’). The Werkself pressed for an equaliser right to the end but failed to score. At the other end, Justin Njinmah rounded off the scoring at 2-0 with a goal in added time (90+4').

outlook: champions league, Bundesliga, international break

The Werkself are back in action in the Champions League Round of 16 second leg against Bayern Munich on Tuesday, 11 March (kick-off: 21:00 CET). That is followed five days later by Bundesliga Matchday 26 with an away game at VfB Stuttgart (Sunday, 16 March, 19:30 CET). The international break comes after that.

Match stats:

Bayer 04: Hradecky - Arthur, Tapsoba (Mukiele 46'), Tah, Hermoso - Xhaka (Palacios 46'), Garcia - Adli, Buendía (Wirtz 46' (Grimaldo 59’)), Tella - Schick

Werder Bremen: Zetterer - Pieper, Veljkovic, Jung - Weiser, Lynen (Bittencourt 78’), Agu - Stage, Schmid (90.+3 Topp 90+3’) - Burke (Njinmah 69’), Silva (Grüll 78’)

Goals: 0-1 Schmid (7’), 0-2 Njinmah (90+4’)

Yellow cards: Schick, Adli, Palacios, Garcia - Lynen, Weiser, Stage

Referee: Tobias Welz (Wiesbaden)

Attendance: 30,210 (sold out) at the BayArena