Bayer Leverkusen v Zenit: Bellarabi wants consistent focus

Bayer Leverkusen winger Karim Bellarabi has called for focus throughout all of Wednesday’s home clash with Zenit.

The Russian outfit travel to the BayArena for the Group C UEFA Champions League clash and will face a wounded Leverkusen.

Roger Schmidt’s side showed their best and worst in Saturday’s 3-3 Bundesliga draw at Stuttgart, in which they threw away a three-goal lead.

Son Heung-min’s first-half double was added to by Bellarabi, but Leverkusen folded after the break and were perhaps lucky to even win a point after Stuttgart’s outstanding response.

Leverkusen may be unbeaten in five but the mood in the camp was far from positive after the result, as Bellarabi revealed.

“That was a game we simply had to win,” Bellarabi told the Bundesliga’s official website.

“But we ended up conceding three goals from three set-pieces.

“I’m not really sure what went wrong, whether we lost focus a little bit or not, but we just can’t allow that sort of thing to happen.

“We were brilliant in the first half and could have scored four or five, so to play that way in the second half is really annoying…we ended up throwing away two points.”

Leverkusen – Champions League finalists in 2002 – lost 1-0 at Monaco on matchday one but hit back with a 3-1 home success against Benfica.

That leaves them third in the pool, one point behind both Monaco and Zenit.

Leverkusen, who sit sixth in the Bundesliga table, are in good scoring form at home this season, netting 17 times in six matches in all competitions.

Zenit won 2-0 at Benfica in their first Champions League match of the season but were held to a goalless stalemate against Monaco last time out.

They top the Russian Premier League table by two points and are unbeaten in 10 matches, with the forward pairing of Hulk and Jose Salomon Rondon giving them plenty of firepower.

And the close-season acquisition of Ezequiel Garay from Benfica has shored up the club’s defence and proved smart.

Leverkusen will continue to be without captain Simon Rolfes, who had a pin in his right ankle removed last week.

Rolfes has not played since sustaining the injury in August, but coach Roger Schmidt said he was ‘making great progress’ last week.

The two sides met each other in the quarter-finals of the 2007-08 UEFA Cup, with Zenit winning 4-2 on aggregate.

The Russians won 4-1 in the first leg in Leverkusen, as they ended up winning the tournament with a 2-0 final success against Rangers.