Spell broken?

That was an important away win for the Werkself today, 3-0 in Mainz. Bayer scored three goals in the first half from a stable defensive position, and two of them showed how proper counterattacking soccer and aggressive forechecking can be successful. In the second half, our team did not let anything happen. In contrast to the first games, the defense stood well, so that it was even to zero to the end.

Nevertheless, the two yellow-red cards for Hincapie and Bakker were annoying, with the second one in particular being completely unnecessary. So discipline is what the team urgently needs to improve in the coming weeks. It went well today, but that doesn't always have to be the case.

Overall, though, the positives outweighed the negatives tonight. And next week against Freiburg we'll build on what went better today than in previous weeks.