Huub Stevens: The season isn’t over yet

Huub Stevens made it clear that his side still has to play well in the BayArena. “Obviously there is a lot less pressure on us now,” said the head coach, whose side secured their Bundesliga safety with a 0-0 draw against FC Augsburg last weekend. “Despite this, the season is not over yet. We want to put in a good performance and not give Leverkusen an easy game, as that would be unfair on the rest of the league,” said the 65-year-old. Bayer’s coach, Peter Bosz, is a fellow Dutchman, and Stevens added: “I won’t be making his life easy by only sending six players out.”

All of the squad is still under pressure to perform, as Stevens “will discuss the club’s situation with the new head coach and let him know his opinions.” “I don’t think any of the players will want me to say anything bad about them to the new coach,” said Stevens. Aside from that, the players also should perform for their own fans. “We don’t want to disappoint our own fans, as unfortunately we have already disappointed them on too many occasions this season,” he commented.

Leverkusen won four in a row

Schalke will face Bayer 04 Leverkusen, who are currently the most in-form team in the Bundesliga and the only team to have picked up a maximum twelve points from their last twelve games, with their most recent victory being a 6-1 battering of Eintracht Frankfurt. Although the result is impressive, Stevens doesn’t want to delve too deep into it as Frankfurt had played against Chelsea in the Europa League on Thursday and so it was Frankfurt’s third game of the week. „Frankfurt play with a high tempo and that will cost them physically after a while. Maybe Leverkusen profitited from it,“ he explained.

At the BayArena, Stevens can call upon Guido Burgstaller again after the striker’s wife Stefanie gave birth to a baby girl. Cedric Teuchert is also available again. Ralf Fährmann, Yevhen Konoplyanka, Sascha Riether, Salif Sané, Alessandro Schöpf, Steven Skrzybski and Mark Uth are all unavailable.