Getting to the bottom of Mainz's mysterious Jekyll and Hyde form

Mainz won no less than 76% of their points at home last season. So what went wrong on the road for Bo Svensson's side?

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While last season’s Bundesliga was full of all sorts of remarkable stories, one that continued to amuse and confuse in equal measure was that of Mainz and their bizarre Jekyll & Hyde form. Indeed, Bo Svensson’s side finished eighth in the German top flight come May with 46 points. And while that may not seem all that peculiar, the fact that a large chunk of their points - no less than 76% - came from home games most certainly is.  

In fact, if the Bundesliga had been decided by home points alone, Mainz would have finished joint third alongside RB Leipzig and just four points behind Borussia Dortmund. However, if it had been decided by away points, Svensson and his side would have found themselves relegated, finishing in second last place and just seven points above a truly hapless Greuther Fürth. 

It’s not that uncommon for some teams to be better at home and in the modern era we’ve even seen counter-attacking sides that perform better on the road. But rarely do we see such a remarkable discrepancy in fortunes from one week to the next. In many ways, Mainz’s home and away form was something of a Bundesliga mystery. So I tried to figure out what was going wrong. 

I began by asking the man who would undoubtedly know better than any other: the gaffer. At a recent media event, I posed the question to Svensson about the club’s contrasting fortunes in the league last season and after a revealing grin consumed his face, he gave some interesting answers. 

“I think you could boil it down to a couple of easy solutions or you could see the bigger picture,” said the Mainz head coach. “I think there were a lot of things that were apparent. First and foremost we just felt good at home. We were coming after two seasons without any fans and I thought that helped us a lot. There were also not as many spectators when we played away from home.”

While this may seem like clever PR from a media-savvy coach, trying to turn a difficult question around into him praising his club’s fans, Svensson undoubtedly had a point. And it’s something that he clearly felt quite passionately about. He then added: “But having the fans back changes some things in football. Spectators make a difference.”

When we think of the pandemic’s impact on football we often rush straight to the financial consequences of empty stadiums and then to how that depressed us - the fans - more than anything else. Rarely do we consider whether players had actually gotten used to the idea of playing in empty stadiums and how the return of spectators could have had such a drastic impact on how a team performed on the pitch. 

Svensson, having clearly answered this question a number of times throughout the season and pondered over it in his spare time too, had some examples to hand. “I can think of a couple of home games from last season, which if they had been played during the lockdown then we wouldn’t have won the games,” he duly noted. “And it’s the same in the away games. We had a game in Köln which we were leading 2-0 and if there hadn’t been 55,000 fans sitting in the stadium I think we would have won the game.” 

When we look at Mainz’s stats from last season (with fans) and their stats from the season before (without fans) we can see where Svensson is coming from. For example, as Svensson’s Köln example suggests, his side were dreadful at holding on to leads or even taking them in away games last season. Throughout the previous Bundesliga campaign, Mainz took the lead away from home just six times but dropped 44% of those potential points, while in the season before without fans they took the lead nine times in away games and only dropped 19% of their potential points. 

However, Mainz’s struggles on the road didn’t just come from a lack of determination to see out games. More often than not, they also threw away games in the first half and found themselves fighting an up-hill battle, which they were never going to win. In the 20/21 season the Carneval club managed on average to score 0.71 goals and concede 0.59 per first half in away games. In the following campaign, those numbers took a worrying turn and Svensson’s side instead conceded 0.94 goals per first half and scored just 0.41 on average. 

In other words, Mainz had become far more porous in the opening stages of games. And when we combine that with their struggles to hold on to rarely-seen leads on the road, it does go some way to explaining why Svensson’s side were so hopeless in away games. And, as the head coach himself has suggested, how the team were perhaps failing to handle the pressure of playing in front of away crowds. 

Indeed, when he expanded on his thoughts about the drastic contrast in form last season, Svensson alluded to another psychological barrier which may have got in the way of his team’s consistency: expectation. And how a surprisingly good run at form may have, in a roundabout way, impacted on their ability to take away games seriously. 

“There was something in the team as well,” noted Svensson. “I think we often won the home game and then the away game became a possibility of making the next step up in the table. So we ended up going into away games with a different attitude than the home games.” 

He added: “So we lost the away game, then thought ‘Oh now we have to win the home game!’ because the teams behind us are coming. And fighting to stay out of the relegation spaces was a greater motivation for us than trying to make the next step up and fighting for Europe. As funny as that sounds, I think that’s how it felt.” 

Now at the end of his first full campaign in charge of the club and the second one on the horizon, Svensson can clearly attest to the lessons he’s had to learn as a young coach on the job. Through bizarre challenges - or mysteries - can come vital experience and lessons learned. And if Svensson and his team have taken anything from the previous Bundesliga season, there’s a good chance they’ll be able to mend it and be even better prepared for what’s to come in the future.