1. FSV Mainz 05 2-3 SV Werder Bremen: Bundesliga Match Report, 24 October 2026

Our preview of this match was written on 18 October 2026 but only went live on 1 November, after the final whistle. Its pick is reviewed below as it was written, and it is left out of our win rate and bankroll.

Three goals by half-time, five by the end, and the visitors ahead at both points. 1. FSV Mainz 05 2-3 SV Werder Bremen: Bremen led 2-1 at the interval and the second half finished 1-1. The record does not give the order of those two second-half goals, so whether Mainz were ever level after the break cannot be said.

The result fits a home-and-away split that already looked extreme. Mainz arrived fifth on ten points at plus four, with nine of those points taken away from home and one in Mainz. They now have one point from four home matches, ten goals conceded in them, and three home defeats in a row, Frankfurt and Leverkusen having also won there.

Bremen, eighth on nine points with a goal difference of exactly zero, had been the reverse: seven points at home, two from three trips. This was their first away win of the season. They have still not kept a clean sheet in seven league matches, and here they did not need one. Fifteen goals scored already, against 37 in the whole of last season.

The meeting also broke from its own history. None of the four previous games between these clubs on record had produced more than three goals.

Bremen go above their hosts, to twelve points from seven with a goal difference of plus one. Mainz stay on ten, now at plus three.

For Bremen that is a real change of pace, if a short one. They finished fifteenth last season on 32 points, with 37 goals scored, the second-lowest total in the division, and only five clubs conceded more than their 60. Twelve from seven is far quicker than the rate they kept then, and they have reached it while still conceding two a game, which puts the improvement so far at the other end of the pitch.

Mainz finished tenth on 40, and ten points from seven is ahead of that pace. The total is fine. The distribution is the problem: a side that has won all three of its away games and none of its four at home cannot yet be called good or bad.

Our preview's call was Over 2.5 Goals at 1.70.

It rested on this season's goal rates rather than the fixture's history. Each club's six matches had produced 24 goals, and the halves that mattered agreed: eleven in Mainz's three home games, eleven in Bremen's three away. Against that stood a head-to-head of eight goals in four meetings, which the preview named as the most awkward fact on the page and then ranked below the current evidence, since two of those meetings belonged to a season whose squads had since changed. That was the defensible order. The risk it raised, Bremen travelling to protect a draw as they had at Köln, was fair to name and was not the match that was played.

Verdict: not counted. The pick would have won, but the preview only went live after kick-off.