“It was just the simple mistakes that played right into their hands”

Mainz 05 3 - 4 Bayer 04 Leverkusen

Niko Bungert: “I can’t fault the effort and the character we showed in that game. It makes things difficult when you concede goals like that against a team like them. We’re in a phase right now where things just aren’t coming naturally to us and our mistakes are being punished quickly. We need to have those little moments to boost our confidence – the potential penalty to make it 1-1 would have done just that. I find that decision to not award the penalty difficult to understand. We wanted to put Leverkusen under pressure and play bravely; it was just the simple mistakes that played right into their hands. It just shows how dangerous we can be when we press high and win the ball in dangerous areas. I’ve been at Mainz 05 long enough to know that we have overcome bigger crises. Despite that, it’s clear we need points as quickly as possible. Winning the game on Thursday would give us some confidence and renewed energy.”

Paul Nebel: “My initial impression of the incident with Tapsoba is that it was a penalty. I got the ball first, then he slid into me and I felt a blow to my ribs. I haven’t seen the incident back on TV yet, so I don’t want to say anything wrong. The bottom line is, we don’t have enough points. We’ve spoken a lot this week about being more stable, more dangerous and being more difficult to play against. We have made steps forward in that regard, but no one is going to sugar-coat it, we know where we’re at and we’re just sticking together as a team. We aren’t at the level we were last season.”

Phillipp Mwene: “We gave it our all right until the very end and left everything out on the pitch. We were naive in the first 20-25 minutes and our press wasn’t working. Things did improve, but it’s like we’ve had multiple times this season, where we start poorly and only get better after changing some things around. Mistakes are always going to happen, but it’s too much when you start conceding two, three, four goals to Leverkusen. The positive thing as that we never gave up, but we still can’t be satisfied with our overall performance.”