Amos Pieper has made a great start to his Werder career. Since his arrival in the summer, the defender has played in 16 of the 17 matches in all competitions, with the only game that he missed being due to suspension. “All in all, I am happy with my performances so far,” explained the 24-year-old in Monday’s Mixed Zone.
Pieper has been a mainstay of the team so far this season but the defender is fully aware of the competition for places that exists within the squad: “I said from the beginning that I quickly want to become part of this team and that I want to play as much as possible. But I also said that I realise how well set we are in that area of the pitch,” he explained. “The first half of the season has shown that each of us can be used in different situations, so everyone has played a decent number of games and got a good number of minutes under the belt.”
Although Pieper expressed on Monday that he believes the whole team are performing well at the moment, the defender stressed that there is still work to be done. “A lot of things have gone well. We have a good structure and apart from the match against Bayern, we have been competitive in every game. Each and everyone one of us needs to make use of this period. We want to improve and that will be a requirement if we are to have a solid second half of the season.”
If the Green-Whites pick up from where they left off, they could secure their Bundesliga survival relatively early on but after his time at Arminia Bielefeld, Pieper knows that this cannot be taken for granted. “Securing Bundesliga safety is never easy. That’s as much the case here as it was at Bielefeld. We managed it in the first season but we unfortunately couldn’t do it second time around. I hope that it’s a bit more stress-fee in my first, second and maybe even third year here.”
