Bundesliga: Paciencia stars as Frankfurt crush Leverkusen

Eintracht Frankfurt 3-0 Bayer Leverkusen, Commerzbank-Arena
(Paciencia 4', pen 17', Dost 81')

The common assumption when Luka Jovic, Ante Rebic and Sebastien Haller walked out the door was that Eintracht Frankfurt would be painfully short on attacking options. That they would struggle to replace a trio that scored 41 of their 60 Bundesliga goals last season.

While it hasn't been all plain sailing for Adi Hütter's side, they've scored in every league game this season and, if anything, their problems can be more accurately pinpointed to other positions in the team.

Frankfurt brought in Bas Dost and Andre Silva, who was injured for this Friday night contest, but he wasn't required as Frankfurt produced the kind of thrilling attacking performance that saw them exceed all expectations last season. A front two of Bas Dost and Goncalo Paciencia was enough to inflict serious damage on a Bayer Leverkusen side whose defending was comically bad at times.

Gray day for Leverkusen

Teams that play in gray rarely do well — see Manchester United at Southampton 1996 — but Leverkusen looked second best from the very start in this one. While their opponents were faster, stronger and hungrier, Leverkusen never stood up to challenge. They were meek and short on ideas, producing only a few half chances early in the second half, that served only to warm the palms of Frederik Ronnow in the Frankfurt goal, than truly test Kevin Trapp's understudy,

In truth, this game was won by the 17th minute. A Bas Dost through ball for Paciencia was calmly put beyond Lukas Hradecky, with a pass and finish that set the tone for the entire game, and possibly the season for Frankfurt. Frankfurt doubled their lead through Paciencia's second, this time from the spot after the dismally bad Aleksandar Dragovic was penalised for handball.

Dragovic had a nightmare performance — outmuscled for the first, the guilty party for the second, and when Bas Dost was racing through to slide the ball home for Frankfurt's third, it was almost inevitable that the calamitous Austrian would do something that smoothed the way for Dost, and indeed he did, slipping under pressure to let the Dutchman through to score his third Bundesliga goal of the season, and his second in as many games.

Leverkusen are a side who promise so much, given their youthful energy in attack and a coach who puts his faith in that offensive talent, but on Friday night they were naive against a Frankfurt side who shouldn't be underestimated. Frankfurt's defense was solid, their strike force were ruthlessly efficient, and with Frankfurt growing in confidence and Silva still to return from injury, the Jovic-Rebic-Haller trident may fade into the past more quickly than anyone had anticipated.