Bayer Leverkusen vs Borussia Dortmund - Schmidt warns Leverkusen must take chances

Posted Saturday, October 01, 2016 by PA

Bayer Leverkusen coach Roger Schmidt wants his team to show more courage when they face Borussia Dortmund in a clash of two sides involved in the Champions League this week.

Leverkusen threw away a one-goal lead to be held to a draw in Monaco and Schmidt is hoping to see a more ruthless streak from his side at the BayArena, against second-placed Dortmund.

"We will get our chances and we've got to make sure we take these," Schmidt said at a press conference on Friday.

"We know we've got the quality, we just need to do more with it.

"We should have scored a second goal (against Monaco) and that was bitter, but we still took a lot with us from the Monaco game and maybe that is more important to us than the result."

Schmidt added that he is not concerned by his side's start to the season, with just two wins from their opening five league games.

"We always had problems in the past too, yet we brought a positive end to the season," he said.

"We've had injury setbacks too, but we still want to get back towards the top of the table with wins."

Schmidt has doubts over Omer Toprak and Lars Bender, who face late fitness tests.

Marc Bartra is still sidelined for Dortmund while Andre Schurrle picked up a knock in their draw with Real Madrid and he has also been ruled out, together with Marco Reus and Sven Bender.

Dortmund coach Thomas Tuchel is nevertheless sure he can field a strong side who can pick up the points in Leverkusen.

"Of course we've invested a lot of energy in recent weeks so yesterday was a day off for the players to relax and distract themselves," he said at a press conference.

"Training was of a very high level today and tomorrow we will have a team who are hungry."