Manuel Baum: Their goals were too soft

Manuel Baum:

Ultimately, Leverkusen deserved to win. Despite that, the way they won is annoying and frustrating for us. We ran more, put in more sprints and defended with real passion – but their goals were too soft. The first goal was an own goal. In football, people often blame others, and we need to come away from this mentality. The referee didn’t put them 1-0 up, we did.

We got in our own way for Leverkusen’s second goal and the third goal came after we lost possession. We need to defend set pieces better and we will work on this in the coming days.

The penalty reflects our situation right now. If we had made it 2-1, we would have been back in the game. I don’t want to criticise Steven Skrzybski though. I have respect for players who take the responsibility in situations like this and take the penalty. You need to be brave to do this.

Peter Bosz:

I’m very pleased with the result. It wasn’t an easy game and it wasn’t as comfortable as the final result perhaps suggests. We controlled the game but we didn’t dominate it, so I couldn’t breathe easy until it was 3-0. Schalke played well and were compact for large stretches of the game. And they had their chances. Obviously we had some clear-cut chances too that we didn’t use. We have to take advantage of those. The missed penalty when it was 2-0 was an important moment. That could’ve made it really close.

Malick Thiaw:

I didn’t position myself smartly enough for the own goal in the tenth minute. I stood looking towards goal, but I should’ve been facing the side so I could’ve headed the ball away. Aleksander Dragovic does push me a bit – and I think you can blow the whistle there. But the referee didn’t. It’s a difficult situation for us. We’re training well, but we need to bring it to the games too. We have to get some points in the next few weeks, we have to give it our all.