Leverkusen beat St Pauli 2-1 for third straight league win

LEVERKUSEN, Germany :Bundesliga champions Bayer Leverkusen struck twice in the first half to beat St Pauli 2-1 on Saturday and make it three league wins in a row for the first time this season.

Buoyed by their midweek German Cup last-16 victory over league leaders Bayern Munich, Leverkusen battled past the promoted Hamburg club to climb to 26 points in third place, seven behind Bayern, who beat Heidenheim 4-2.

"We played a good first half with a lot of stability," Leverkusen coach Xabi Alonso told a press conference. "We went 2-0 up and that was good but it was not yet over and when you don't score then anything can happen.

"St Pauli scored and then they put pressure on us. We were maybe lacking a bit of intensity in the one-on-ones. But it is not easy playing every three days and today was a good example of that."

Leverkusen, who host Inter Milan in the Champions League on Tuesday, needed six minutes to take control of the game with Germany international Florian Wirtz firing in from a superb Granit Xhaka pass.

Wirtz, having a superb season so far, has netted five times in the league and set up another four goals.

The hosts were without their two top strikers, Victor Boniface and Patrik Schick, who are nursing injuries, with the latter racing to be fit for the Inter game.

They still managed to double their lead in the 21st after unmarked defender Jonathan Tah headed in at the far post.

St Pauli needed half an hour to get their first effort towards goal and struggled throughout against a solid backline.

But they set up a nervous finale when they pulled one back in the 84th through Morgan Guilavogui and had two more chances for a stoppage-time equaliser before Levekusen bagged the points.