Andre Breitnreiter’s Paderborn ill travel to the Coface Arena to take on a Mainz side who are looking to regain a bit of form starting the New Year.
To end the first half of the campaign, the visitors of this afternoon’s match drew three out of their last five matches while losing the other two. Luckily, Paderborn are still sitting in the 10th spot in the Bundesliga table, but if their form continues to slip like it has been doing, they could find themselves battling to stay in the first division.
For Die, they need to turn things around as quickly as possible. Kasper Hjulmand’s men ended the last calendar with a 1-2 loss to Bayern Munich but should take confidence going into this match because the hosts did play well. It was a 90th minute strike from Arjen Robben that stole a vital point away from a hard-working Mainz outfit.
Mainz have a mixture of younger footballers who are breaking onto the scene while blending with veterans who have been around the block once or twice before. They are led up front by 28-year-old Japanese forward Shinji Okazaki who uses his pace to get by defenders. He also has a good shooting touch having found the back of the net eight times on 16 separate occasions. Wunderkid Johannes Geis has been on a lot of clubs radars with his sparkling performances operating as a deep-laying playmaker, cutting defenses apart thanks to his fantastic vision.
The visitors do not score a lot of goals as they have managed to get on the score sheet a mere 21 times in 17 matches. On the flip side of things, Paderborn’s opponents put goals back into the back of their net on five more occasions giving them a minus four goal differential. They will have to work on tightening up their back line if they want to continue slowly climbing up the Bundesliga table.