Bayern must do better: Schweinsteiger

Bastian Schweinsteiger insists Bayern Munich still have plenty of room for improvement despite their 5-1 win at Borussia Dortmund which puts them in touch with Bundesliga leaders Hamburg.

Bayern had slumped down to 16th in the league after a poor start to the season which included a shock 2-1 defeat at Mainz in August, but wins over defending champions Wolfsburg and now Dortmund have lifted them to fourth.

After Dortmund’s Mats Hummels got an early goal, Bayern’s Mario Gomez equalised in the 36th minute before his Germany team-mate Schweinsteiger struck with a fine individual goal on 50 minutes.

France star Franck Ribery drilled home a free-kick on 65 minutes, before youngster Thomas Mueller, who only turned 20 on Sunday, scored two late goals.

But Schweinsteiger says the team still have much to improve on.

“The first half was not good from us,” admitted the Germany midfielder.

“There was not enough aggression from us and we didn’t look comfortable.

“Things were better in the second half.

“The result of course looks really great and we scored some nice goals, but due to the first-half performance it wasn’t our best result of the season.

“But if we can re-capture the second-half performance, more success will come.”

Defending champions Wolfsburg are down to tenth in the table after suffering their third straight league defeat when they lost 3-2 to Bayer Leverkusen as both sides finished the game with ten men.

Wolfsburg’s woes began after 30 minutes when goalkeeper Diego Benaglio was sent-off for appearing to foul Leverkusen’s Eren Derdiyok outside the area.

Swiss striker Derdiyok was also shown a red card for picking up his second yellow card on 53 minutes.

This was Wolfsburg’s third consecutive defeat after falling to Hamburg and Bayern in the last two rounds and drops them down to tenth place, while Leverkusen are second.

Benaglio’s dismissal led to Germany midfielder Simon Rolfes hitting their first goal on 38 minutes before converting a 52nd minute penalty.

His national team-mate Stefan Kiessling hit the third.

Wolfsburg fought back with play-maker Zvjezdan Misimovic scoring from a direct free-kick on 76 minutes before Grafite slotted a late penalty but it was too little, too late.

“I saw two games out there today,” said Wolfsburg coach Armin Veh.

“First of all we had Leverkusen under control, created some good chances and things were going well for us.

“The second game started after the red card, that was crucial.

“We conceeded a quick goal and a stupid penalty: suddenly we were 3-0 down.

“Nevertheless, the team never gave up and fought to the final whistle.”

On Saturday evening, Hamburg striker Mladen Petric hit a wonder goal to fire his side back to the top of the Bundesliga and help beat Stuttgart 3-1.

The Croatian star took a neat return pass from Dutch midfielder Eljero Elia and drilled his shot past Stuttgart goalkeeper Jens Lehmann from outside the penalty area on 30 minutes as Hamburg dominated the match.

Elia – whose goal eliminated Scotland from making the runners-up spot in their World Cup qualifying group earlier this week – then netted a goal of his own on 58 minutes.

Stuttgart pulled back a consolation goal through Russia striker Pavel Pogrebnyak on 62 minutes, but Hamburg midfielder Ze Roberto fired home in injury time to give his side their fourth straight league win.

“The team is in good health,” said Hamburg coach Bruno Labbadia.

“It is only one result, but it is great to see us get to this point.

“We showed a lot of patience today.”