"A bloody awful afternoon for us”

Nicolai Remberg: We knew that Mainz play with a lot of long balls and would repeatedly look for Tietz, who is good at holding the ball up and laying it off. Unfortunately, we didn’t manage to defend that well at all. The goals we conceded were far too cheap and far too easy, with the first one obviously down to me. Up until that point, we had actually been doing quite well, had some momentum going forward, and the stadium was behind us as well. After that, we let our heads drop and also missed the opportunity to come out after the break with fresh energy. Losing 5-0 is a massive blow, but it’s not the end of the world. We can’t suddenly talk everyone down. We also brought in a lot of players only towards the end of the transfer window last season. We will have to get used to playing together and find our rhythm. Then we’ll be there, I’m sure of that. Our patterns of play aren’t particularly difficult to understand, but putting them into practice on the pitch is the challenge. Maybe it just needs a little more time. It’s really frustrating at the moment because we had a good week of training and were doing well with our patterns of play. That makes it all the more bitter that so little of that was visible today. Tomorrow’s analysis is not going to be a pleasant one.

Daniel Heuer Fernandes: The result speaks for itself. This shouldn’t happen to us – especially not at home. We didn’t manage to show on the pitch what we had set out to do. That’s how we ended up conceding the goals. We actually knew that the opposition would defend compactly and play quickly into the final third. But we allowed them to create chances because of our positioning. It wasn’t down to individuals, but to the team as a whole – how we defended and attacked. We weren’t at our maximum in many areas and have to learn from things like this. There are a number of issues that we need to address and improve. We’re at the start of the season and will still need to find our rhythm and get our patterns of play right. Then we’ll show a better side of ourselves again. Today, we simply didn’t execute things well enough.

Merlin Polzin: Everyone saw the game. The result speaks for itself. It’s a bloody awful afternoon for us. We deserved to lose by a clear margin. There are many things that we want and need to work on in order to do better next week. It’s less about trying to sugar-coat anything or finding explanations in the heat of the moment. We’ll do that calmly in our analysis with the team and coaching staff, with the aim of showing a different side as quickly as possible. We knew that we had to be extremely alert to Mainz’s counter-attacking game and make sure our rest defence was right. We didn’t manage to get into our patterns of play. We addressed that clearly at half-time. There were lots of little things that didn’t quite click together. That will certainly be a major focus of the analysis: why didn’t it work? It’s not about singling out individuals, whether that’s for good or bad performances. We all go through these phases together. It’s a moment that hurts enormously and one that we certainly didn’t expect. It shows all of us that we need to stay clear-headed and get the simple things right first.

Urs Fischer: Of course, I’m happy with the win. You don’t just travel to HSV and win. I was impressed by what my boys showed, particularly in the first half. That meant we deserved to go into the break ahead. It says a lot about my boys that they kept going afterwards, because HSV had certainly planned a lot for the second half. Scoring the 3-0 in the 47th minute really hurt them. After that, we saw the game through in a very consistent manner.