Männel saves Aue a point - Hansa knocking at the top

Leipzig (dpa) -

Working win lets Hansa dream

The challenge came from the goalscorer. "We now have to keep up our flow. We want to keep crawling towards the top," said Marco Schuster, who scored the hugely important 1-0 in FC Hansa Rostock's 2-0 win over 1. FC Schweinfurt. In any case, the success ensured that the Baltic club stayed in touch with the top and had the opportunity to soon set their sights on the promotion places after a very mixed start to the season.

Coach Daniel Brinkmann doesn't want to hear any of that. "We don't want to have a big mouth, we want to convince with results," he demanded in view of the laborious victory over the team at the bottom of the table. The Kogge were clearly superior, but failed to take their chances and then had to wait until the 78th minute before the redemptive first goal was scored. "That's a good learning effect, that we have to stay calm and believe in our chances. That's how we scored the goals in the end. We create an incredible number of situations. That's the important thing," emphasized Brinkmann on "MagentaSport".

The eternal Männel secures Aue a point

37 years young, 550 point games for FC Erzgebirge Aue since 2008, 16 penalties saved, captain for ten years: Martin Männel can now boast this record after the goalless draw against VfB Stuttgart II. And all the Aue players, officials and fans knew who they had to thank for this point: Their goalkeeper and captain.

Whenever Männel was called upon in the freezing cold at the Erzgebirge Stadium, he did his job with aplomb, as he almost always does. Of course, the penalty saved against Noah Darvich and the brilliant reaction to the subsequent header, which he deflected onto the crossbar, were the greatest deeds. Aue without Männel - unthinkable. After all, he kept a clean sheet against VfB for the 159th time in an Aue shirt. The fact that it was still not enough for the hoped-for leap away from a direct relegation place was mainly due to the fact that his front men only had 25 good minutes offensively, but did not take advantage of the opportunities that presented themselves.