Bayer 04 coach Kasper Hjulmand pushed back on Friday against talk that his side has made no progress, days before the derby at 1. FC Köln. The 54-year-old said it was “completely wrong” to say the team had not developed, even as Leverkusen sit sixth in the table in 2026.
That position leaves Bayer 04 four points behind fourth place, which is enough for Champions League participation, and underlines how far the defending double winners from 2024 have drifted from their own standard. Hjulmand pointed to the numbers behind the results, saying: “wir können auch die Daten hinter den Ergebnissen sehen - und wir haben eine Entwicklung.” He added that he did not want to spend too much time defending the point because “Ich möchte nicht zu viel darüber reden, weil es so klingt, als würde ich das verteidigen.”
The tension around Leverkusen is not just the league table. In the second half of the season they have averaged 1.54 points per match, a return that would normally keep a team in the fight but has left them only in eighth place in the half-season standings, behind Mainz and Augsburg. That sits in sharp contrast with 2024, when Bayer 04 entered the short Christmas break in third place and looked set to challenge at the top again.
Hjulmand tried to widen the debate beyond the standings, arguing that coaches always want their teams to create more chances than they allow. “Ein Trainer versucht immer, dass seine Mannschaft mehr Chancen kreiert als sie zulässt. Egal, welche Philosophie man verfolgt, das Ziel ist immer, mehr Chancen zu kreieren als der Gegner,” he said. That is the crux of the argument now: whether Bayer 04’s 2026 results are simply poor, or whether the underlying performance is better than the table suggests.
For Leverkusen, the answer matters because the margin for error has almost vanished. They are still in reach of fourth place, but every dropped point turns the gap between expectation and reality into a deeper problem, and Friday’s derby in Cologne arrives with the club already having to defend more than its position in the table.
