Arrivals
In today's game against Union Berlin, one notable name was missing from the Die Eisernen - Robert Andrich. Earlier on in the week, the Sky Transfer Show reported that the defensive midfielder would be making a move to Leverkusen after today's match. Now it is more concrete - even Union Berlin's own website prematurely announced that Andrich had departed and furthermore, club officials confirmed it in a pre-match interview. Whether or not we needed him is debatable but at least we have a busy week of transfers!
L'Equipe announced Thursday that Leverkusen had made a first, undisclosed, offer to PSG for Thilo Kehrer, but one which was well off PSG's asking price. Yesterday, Goal France revealed that the offer was €12m and PSG wanted €25m. Nicolo Schira also declared we were in 'advanced talks' with the player. But as soon as the rumours heated up, they were quickly cooled with the news that Kehrer was not interested in leaving PSG. You would be forgiven for thinking we had already been through this - we have, just over a week ago. It is therefore clear that he will not be coming this summer.
Departures
Nothing new to report
My thoughts on today's game
It wasn't ever going to be easy - Union at home are a force to be reckoned with, now going 17 games unbeaten. Just after Schick had a great chance, we were pegged back by an outstanding finish by Awoniyi, a real piledriver which gave Hradecky no chance. Thankfully, we did not have to wait too long for a response as Diaby's drove forward from the right, cut inside and passed the ball into the bottom corner. From that point on, we dominated the game and played excellent attacking football. It was in stark contrast to how we played with Bosz however with the ball being far further up the pitch and being passed around with real vigour. We were creating chances but unfortunately Schick left his shooting boots at home, missing even more great opportunities. As the game wore on, we appeared noticeably more tired, perhaps due to our disrupted preparation, and the team in red piled on the pressure, and really should have scored. The last big chance of the game fell to Mitchell Bakker who was unfortunately caught in two minds; his hesitation meant that his shot was blocked and went flying over. Overall, I think we should be happy with this performance and on another day, we could have easily walked away with a win. I wasn't greatly impressed with Odilon Kossounou as he did seem to be caught out a few times but his performance was still satisfactory - he also will only get better with time. Bakker on the whole was one of our top performers, driving forward and making things happen but also defensively strong, making some big tackles - probably my man of the match. Gladbach will surely pose a sterner test than Union but if we are able to replicate the kind of football we played in the first half of the match, we can go into the game optimistic.
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