“We want to continue playing our brand of football”

Last weekend could hardly have gone any better for HSV. The Rothosen convincingly won 3-0 in Nürnberg, with the other three teams that started the matchday in the top four places all lost. It means HSV are now top of the table and six points clear of third place with six games to go, allowing a lot of Rothosen to start dreaming that this year could finally be the year promotion is achieved. However, in football there is the famous old saying ‘you’re only as good as your last game’ and that’s the motto for the Rothosen at the start of the new week. Preparations began on Monday (7th April) for Friday’s home game against Eintracht Braunschweig. Head coach Merlin Polzin, who welcomed back Dennis Hadzikadunic to training and was also able to give a positive update regarding both Davie Selke and Jonas Meffert, told the media afterwards that his lads were fully focused in training. The Hamburg-born coach spoke in detail about…​​​​​​​

…the table: We want to continue playing our brand of football. The lads aren’t getting carried away, they’re just focusing on their work. This is one of the reasons we are where we are in the table. We won’t allow ourselves to lose concentration after positive results. We analysed the things we didn’t like about our performance in Nürnberg today. We have extremely high expectations of ourselves. It’s important that we don’t place too much importance on getting results but also look to improve the way we play.

..the squad: I’m hoping that all the players that had a knock last week – Selke, Meffert and Hadzikadunic – will be an option for Friday. We didn’t let Meffo contest any challenges today because his mask isn’t ready yet. He’ll be back in full training when it is. We managed Davie’s workload today and we need to see how Dennis reacts. We’ll make a decision based on the week of training and our opponents’ approach. I’m hopeful we’ll have plenty of players to choose from on Friday, allowing us to name a starting XI full of top players. 

…the upcoming opponents: Braunschweig have a good team and they can always be dangerous, something they not only showed last weekend but also in games against us. We therefore have to make sure we prepare well. We don’t want to leave anything to chance, we need a good week of training behind us. 

…Lukasz Poreba: He did well in Nürnberg. I was pleased for him and us. He’s always given his best over the past few weeks when he’s not been playing and was a positive guy for the lads to be around. We are obviously thinking about using him as a box-to-box midfielder against Braunschweig. He played as a holding midfielder against Nürnberg, which is where his strengths lie. We also think he can play a bit further forward, it’s definitely an option for him.