“That’s why we’re not scoring goals”

Mainz 05 0 - 1 Leipzig

Niko Bungert: “There were two clear periods where we gave up easy chances. In between them, it was decent enough, and we created our own goalscoring opportunities. In the end, they scored from distance, which you can’t always prevent. In the second half, there was a lot of attacking but without the crucial final bit of quality. We didn’t create any more real chances, which is a shame, as we could have got more out of this game. Leipzig did defend well though and didn’t give us a lot of space. We do also have three injured attackers who would have helped us, but even then, we did still have one or two chances. The bottom line is that this performance wasn’t good enough to get a result in the Bundesliga.”

Dominik Kohr: “The runs, crosses and our positional play in the box just aren’t working at the moment, and that’s why we’re not scoring goals. We can be better; we’ve already shown that. I’m sure that we will quickly find a way back to our strengths. We had the chances, but there was often something missing, even though we got into good positions. If we work our opponents as hard as we did in that second half again, I’m sure we’ll be rewarded. We can’t really blame ourselves – our attitude was right, we just need to get better in the final third. It’s clear that, even with the excitement of the Conference League, we do still need to do our job week in week out in the Bundesliga and get points on the board.”

Arnaud Nordin: “We had some good chances to go ahead in the first half. Leipzig managed to do that first though and it then became difficult for both teams to fashion goalscoring opportunities. They sat deep and it became more and more difficult for us to find any space. A positive is that we did create chances – we can take that away from this game, but we also need to be a lot better and more precise. I personally feel very good after pre-season and I’m glad to be getting more and more game time. It’s normal for players from other leagues to take time getting used to things here.”