Slomka wary of Brugge threat

Hannover boss Mirko Slomka has urged his team to carry their Bundesliga performances into their Europa League clash against Club Brugge.

Sitting seventh domestically and unbeaten in their past eight league matches, Hannover enter Thursday’s round-of-32 first-leg encounter at AWD-Arena in fine form.

Slomka hopes they can take their Bundesliga form into the meeting against the similarly in-form Belgians.

“We have a good attack. We’ve been developing in a good way. You could see that in Mainz and we would like to build on that with a positive result against Brugge,” he said on Wednesday.

“Our plan is to force them into mistakes and keep the pressure high on them.”

Club Brugge have won four consecutive games and are second in the Belgian First Division, coming off an impressive 3-1 win at third-placed Gent in the league on Sunday.

Slomka said he was wary of the threat Christoph Daum’s men would pose to his side.

“I think that this game is 50-50. Both teams are in good form,” Slomka said.

“Christoph Daum is a special coach. I’m really looking forward to facing him on the bench. I’m excited about how his team will play against us.”

“He talked very respectfully about us. So both teams want to move on and both teams know how hard the game will be.”

Club Brugge coach Daum said it was vital for his team to attack in the first leg in Germany, and he wants an away goal.

“It is very important to set up the team in a way they can score a goal, against Hannover you can’t focus just on defence. They are too strong so if you do so they will score,” Daum said.

“We need to find a good balance between working on defence and switch into attacking. That’s the only way to score as Hannover will be hard to defeat.”