Both teams will be determined to claim all three points for different reasons, and although Mainz celebrated success at the BayArena last season, there is no hiding the fact that Leverkusen enter Friday's contest as firm favourites to come out on top.
Alonso and co have shown that they still boast an attacking threat even without the presence of Boniface, and they should ultimately have few problems breaching Mainz's backline en route to claiming a title-boosting victory.
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Data Analysis
Our analysis of all available data, including recent performances and player stats up until an hour before kickoff, suggested the most likely outcome of this match was a Bayer Leverkusen win with a probability of 69.9%. A draw had a probability of 17.3% and a win for Mainz 05 had a probability of 12.83%.
The most likely scoreline for a Bayer Leverkusen win was 2-0 with a probability of 10.25%. The next most likely scorelines for that outcome were 2-1 (9.58%) and 1-0 (8.53%). The likeliest drawn scoreline was 1-1 (7.97%), while for a Mainz 05 win it was 1-2 (3.72%). The actual scoreline of 2-1 was predicted with a 9.6% likelihood. Our team at Sports Mole and our data analysis both correctly predicted that Bayer Leverkusen would win this match.
0.05) 
-0.01) 
