The Werkself head for Hanover on the ICE on Saturday afternoon. There will be a team meeting in the evening and a communal walk on Sunday morning. After lunch it's off to the stadium just before two in the afternoon. For the first time in the current Bundesliga campaign, Heiko Herrlich's team will play in the white away kit at the HDI Arena . The hosts will play in their red, black and white kit.
Bayer 04 can go into the last league match of the year in confident mood: The Werkself have now gone eleven Bundesliga games without defeat (six wins, five draws) – that is the longest run in the league this term. The last time Bayer 04 had a similar run without defeat (also eleven games) was in 2013 and there was an even longer run in 2009/10 with the club record of 24 games undefeated.
And the Leverkusen record against Hannover 96 is also impressive: Bayer 04 have not lost any of the last seven matches in the Bundesliga against the team currently tenth in the league with six of the seven games ending in victory and one all square. A couple more stats? – Hannover 96 have not scored a single goal against Bayer 04 in the last three meetings. The Werkself have only lost one of 14 games with the team from Lower Saxony since December 2009 (nine wins, four draws). Hannover are only longer without a win in the Bundesliga against Bayern Munich (ten games) than against the Werkself (seven games). At the same time, Leverkusen have only remained longer unbeaten by Augsburg and Stuttgart (13 each).
The Herrlich team have not lost any of the last five Bundesliga away games (three wins, two draws) – the last similar run for Leverkusen was seven years ago. Back then, the Werkself, under coach Robin Dutt, were undefeated between October 2011 and January 2012 in six Bundesliga away fixtures (two wins, four draws).
The Werkself have scored in every one of the last 21 Bundesliga matches, which is the longest run in the league this season. Bayer 04 had an even longer run of scoring between October 1999 and May 2000 (24 – the club record).
Heiko Herrlich won his only game against Hannover as a coach on matchday 17 in the 2009/10 season in a 3-2 win for Bochum. Herrlich also won his only game against the Reds as a player. He came off the bench late on in a 2-0 win for Borussia Dortmund in the Bundesliga in March 2003.
Karim Bellarabi has been on the winning side all of the five times he played against Hannover 96 with Eintracht Braunschweig and Bayer Leverkusen. And Bayer 04 sporting director Rudi Völler also won his only Bundesliga game against Hannover as a player for Bremen, scoring a hat-trick in an 8-2 victory in August 1985. That is the only time they have conceded eight goals in a Bundesliga fixture
The last time the Werkself and Hannover met was at the BayArena on 30 January 2016. Stefan Kießling and Chicharito (2) scored the goals in a 3-0 win against the team that was relegated that season.
Hannover 96 have only won one of the last six Bundesliga fixtures (one draw, four defeats) with a 2-0 win against Hoffenheim in the last home match. On matchday 16, the team from Lower Saxony lost 3-1 at Hertha Berlin and are currently tenth in the table. The victory against Hoffenheim was the only time in the last ten Bundesliga fixtures where the Reds have kept a clean sheet. The other matches have seen them concede 20 goals. Hannover 96 kept four clean sheets in the first six games of the season. Nevertheless: Hannover are still on course to stay up with 22 points from 16 Bundesliga games and when they were relegated in 2015/16 they only had 14 points at the same stage.
Ten of the 20 Bundesliga goals scored by Hannover this season were from dead balls. Only four other teams have scored more often from set pieces. André Breitenreiter's team have scored five times in succession from set pieces with the last three strikes coming from free kicks. Also worth noting is that Hannover only get going in the second half of games. 16 of the 20 Bundesliga goals for the Reds came in the second half and the ratio of 80% it's by far the highest in the league.
Anybody not travelling to Hanover can watch the game with fellow fans by coming to the Schwadbud on Sunday. The game will be shown on a number of screens. Doors open at 14.30 CET.
Winger Synne Skinnes Hansen is leaving Bayer 04 Leverkusen at the end of the season. The 29-year-old, who will be out of contract, is set to join Valerenga IF back home in Norway.
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Rüdiger Vollborn has been at the club for 40 years, he holds the record number of Bundesliga appearances for the club (401) and is the only Bayer 04 player to have won both the UEFA Cup (1988) and the DFB Pokal (1993). And the Berliner stayed with the Werkself after ending his impressive playing career as he worked as a goalkeeping coach for the following nine years. Vollborn now works under the Bayer Cross as a fan liaison officer and club archivist. Since February 2021, the personalised Black and Red lexicon takes Werkself fans under the heading of 'Rudi recounts...' on a brief trip through the history of Bayer 04 every month…
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Analysing and further developing goalkeeping together is the target of the annual goalkeeping coaches meeting of the German Football Association (DFB). The goalkeeping coaches in the Bundesliga, Bundesliga 2 and the third division, divided into regional groups, meet every year under the guidance of DFB goalkeeping coordinator Marc Ziegler. Following 2023, the meeting of the goalkeeping coaches of professional clubs from the Western region took place yesterday, Tuesday 29 April, at the BayArena for the second time. The Werkself goalkeeping coach David Thiel acted as the host of the meeting and he made an impromptu contribution.
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Bayer 04 Leverkusen have agreed to loan U19 striker Artem Stepanov to FC Nürnberg, currently tenth in Bundesliga 2, for the 2025/26 season. The Ukrainian centre-forward is set to gain match practice at a high level under the guidance of FCN coach and World Cup winner Miroslav Klose. The loan is due to run for twelve months.
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