Werkself review #B04SCF: Go into Pokal tie with confidence after four league wins in a row

Summary: Poku and Tapsoba reward dominant Werkself

A commanding display against SC Freiburg secured a fourth league win in a row for Bayer 04. After two important saves by Mark Flekken in the opening minutes, Bayer 04 took control of proceedings and also got onto the front foot. Ernest Poku scored after a fine one-two with Aleix Garcia for a deserved opener at 1-0 (22'). With Jarell Quansah back in the starting XI after injury, the Black and Reds rarely allowed SCF the chance to play their game and increased their lead at the start of the second half with a header from Edmond Tapsoba at 2-0 (52'). After Freiburg's Philipp Lienhart was shown the red card for a second bookable offence on 74 minutes, the Werkself confidently held on to their lead with the extra man and almost 80 per cent possession. Garcia, in particular, was the focal point of a dominant Leverkusen side with Patrik Schick making his comeback after more than four weeks out injured.

• The match report

Reaction: "Playing more and more as a team"

"This win was really important after the defeat against PSG and looking forward to the Pokal tie," said goalscorer Poku, before talking about his current form: "I want to help the team and I think I'm doing that quite well at the moment. I hope I can maintain this flow, because there's a lot more to come!"

Tapsoba was also beaming when he spoke about his goal celebration after the second strike: "I was just so happy and didn't know what to do, so I slipped. At the start of the season, Rogier (assistant coach Meijer, ed.) helped me a lot to score more goals with my head. That's why I ran to him today to thank him." Keeper Flekken, for his part, was delighted with his second clean sheet of the season and he saw the win as "the right response. It hardly gets any better than this. You can feel that we're becoming more and more of a team."

Head coach Kasper Hjulmand agreed: "The whole team is showing more and more of our identity. We continue to build something from game to game. We're already pretty good, but there are still a lot of things we can do better." The Dane feels vindicated after the 2-0 win in his call to use the PSG game in the week as an opportunity: "You can learn a lot from difficult matches like that to do better in the next games. We did that well today. The team and the entire staff have worked extremely well since Tuesday and put together a top strategy for this game." Hjulmand also had words of praise for Garcia's performance: "He has a very good sense of rhythm in the passing game. He sees the whole pitch and plays very good long and diagonal balls."

• Post-match reaction

What the papers say: "Great on the ball and a composed style of play"

"Bayer's impressive response" was the headline in kicker linking to the Champions League defeat during the week, with the Werkself being "great on the ball and with a composed style of play". And further: "Bayer 04 Leverkusen made amends against Freiburg immediately with happy faces all round after the final whistle." "Amends made!" wrote the Bild newspaper and felt that Hjulmand's promise to give something back to the fans in the Bundesliga had been honoured. "Aleix Garcia was the best player on the pitch," praised the Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger in its individual review. "Mark Flekken was wide awake straight away" is how the Kölnische Rundschau summed up the Bayer 04 goalkeeper's strong opening phase.

Personnel: Flekken right on song - Garcia best in the league

Flekken kept a clean sheet for the second time this season against his former club SC Freiburg, while Schick celebrated his comeback to the Werkself after a four-week injury lay-off.

Poku's opening goal against Freiburg was his third in the Bundesliga. The Dutchman has now had a goal involvement in each of his last four games (three goals, one assist). Another player who also likes to play his part in Leverkusen's goals is Alejandro Grimaldo. The Spaniard's four goals this term were joined by his third assist against Freiburg. Since his arrival in 2023, no player in the Bundesliga has set up more goals than Grimaldo.

Garcia is currently redefining the meaning of the word precision. The Spaniard plays the most passes in the league with a pass completion rate of over 93 per cent. Against Freiburg, he once again acted as the focal point in the build-up, was involved in almost every move and, in addition to the first goal, he also set up four other goalscoring opportunities.

Stats: Werkself have more points than last season

With an average age of 25 years and 364 days, the Bayer 04 starting XI was the club's youngest in the Bundesliga since August 2024. The Black and Reds took the lead, as in every Bundesliga match so far this season - something only Bayern Munich have managed to do as well. The Werkself also scored in their 17th consecutive match this term, taking the goals tally to 35 - an average of more than two per game.

The win against Freiburg was the fourth league victory in a row for Leverkusen, something the team had not yet achieved in the current calendar year. In addition, head coach Hjulmand's team now has two more points than at the same stage last season.

Bayer 04 continue to top Bundesliga stats. Leverkusen have won the most duels (882), have the second-best passing completion rate (89.2 per cent) and have the third highest possession stats (57 per cent).

Coming up: DFB Pokal then FC Bayern away

In the second of three consecutive weeks with midweek games, the Werkself face SC Paderborn 07 in the second round of the DFB Pokal on Wednesday, 29 October (kick-off: 18:00 CET). After the tie at the Bundesliga 2 club, the Bundesliga leaders are next up on Saturday, 1 November. The kick-off in the top match away to Bayern Munich is at 18:30 CET.