Count Leverkusen’s Five Straight Defeats

Five. Bayer 04 Leverkusen have lost all five of their Bundesliga matches, leaving them 18th, last, with zero points. The run is not a narrow scrape through a difficult opening: it has been built on five defeats, with the latest arriving at home against VfL Wolfsburg on 19 September.

The sequence began with a 4-0 loss to Borussia Dortmund on 18 August. A week later, Leverkusen fell 2-1 away to Eintracht Frankfurt. They then lost 2-1 at home to FC St. Pauli, before a 1-0 defeat at TSG Hoffenheim on 15 September. Wolfsburg made it five, winning 3-2 on Thursday.

There have been different shapes to the losses, but the same outcome. The opening defeat was emphatic; the next four were settled by a single goal. Leverkusen have scored in three of those four, yet each time the margin has been too small to rescue even a point. Against Wolfsburg, two goals were still not enough.

The table makes the cost plain. After five matches, Leverkusen have no points and occupy the bottom place. There is no cushion in the numbers, and no evidence yet of a result capable of changing the direction of the season.

Ben Zlatko Studtrucker, in charge since June 2061, is under pressure. A run like this leaves little room for reassuring explanations: the club need points, and quickly. Their next task is not to defend a position in the table but to climb out of the one they have reached, with the first five rounds already gone and nothing to show for them.