Crunch time for BATE and Leverkusen

FC BATE Borisov and Bayer 04 Leverkusen are two sides desperately seeking a positive result on UEFA Champions League matchday five.

• Making their first visit to Belarus, Leverkusen will move second in Group E with a win if AS Roma fail to defeat FC Barcelona. However, the Bundesliga club and BATE will be eliminated if Roma prevail and this game ends in a draw.

Match background

BATE
• BATE have won four out of five home games in Europe this season. Prior to their matchday three loss to Barcelona (0-2), they had overcome Dundalk FC (2-1), Videoton FC (1-0) and FK Partizan (1-0) in the qualifying rounds before a 3-2 victory over Roma.

• Beaten 4-1 at Leverkusen on matchday one, BATE are looking to keep alive their hopes of reaching the last 16 for the first time. They have failed to survive this stage on four previous attempts but did finish third in their group in 2012/13 with the help of a home win over FC Bayern München.

• The scorers in their 3-1 success over Bayern in October 2012 included Vitali Rodionov, one of seven survivors in BATE's current squad. Aleksandr Hleb, Dmitri Likhtarovich, Dmitri Mozolevski, Edgar Olekhnovich, Denis Polyakov and Aleksandr Volodko are the others.

Leverkusen
• Leverkusen are looking for their first away win in the UEFA Champions League since a 2-1 success at FC Zenit in November 2014.

• Including the 1-0 play-off first-leg defeat at SS Lazio, Leverkusen have lost all three away games played to date in this season's UEFA Champions League – each time to a goal conceded in the final 15 minutes.

• The Bundesliga side have progressed from the UEFA Champions League group stage in their last six attempts. The last time they suffered elimination before Christmas was in 2000/01.

Coach and player links
• Home coach Aleksandr Yermakovich played in BATE's first encounter with Bundesliga opponents – a 1-0 first-leg success at TSV 1860 München (5-0 aggregate) in the 2002 UEFA Intertoto Cup.

• During spells in Germany with VfB Stuttgart (2000–05, 2009–10) and VfL Wolfsburg (2011), Hleb faced Leverkusen 11 times, with a record of four wins, one draw and six defeats. He scored against them once – in Stuttgart's 3-0 home league victory in April 2003.

• Nikolai Signevich scored in Belarus's 3-2 friendly win over Javier Hernández's Mexico last November. Ilya Aleksievich, Sergei Chernik, Mikhail Gordeichuk, Igor Stasevich and Maksim Volodko also played for Belarus.

• Admir Mehmedi struck twice for Switzerland in a 3-0 win over a Belarus side containing Dmitri Baga, Vitali Gaiduchik and Polyakov at the UEFA European Under-21 Championship in Denmark in 2011.

• Players who played together:
Hleb & Roberto Hilbert (Stuttgart 2009–10)

Match facts

BATE
• Nemanja Milunović and Filip Mladenović will incur a suspension with their next bookings.

• Dmitri Mozolevski scored twice as holders BATE ran out 5-0 victors against FC Granit Mikashevichi on Friday in the first leg of their Belarusian Cup round of 16 tie.

• BATE claimed their tenth successive Belarusian title on 16 October by winning 2-0 at FC Vitebsk. They concluded their Vysshaya Liga campaign with a 4-1 triumph over SFC Slutsk on 8 November, finishing 12 points clear of runners-up FC Dinamo Minsk.

• Sergei Chernik kept a league best 16 clean sheets in 24 appearances. BATE did not concede a goal until their 11th fixture of the 2015 season.

Leverkusen
• Kyriakos Papadopoulos and Ömer Toprak are serving one-game bans.

• Leverkusen halted a run of three successive defeats in all competitions when they prevailed 3-1 at Eintracht Frankfurt on Saturday.

• Hernández has scored in each of his last seven Leverkusen appearances, ten goals in total.

• Papadopoulos was sent off in the 2-1 home defeat by 1. FC Köln on 7 November – the fourth red card of his Bundesliga career.

• Lars Bender has sat out the Werkself's last four matches with an ankle problem.

• Tin Jedvaj (out since 17 July, thigh) made his comeback as a substitute in the 0-0 draw at Hamburger SV on 17 October only to sustain another thigh injury in training five days later that is expected to sideline him for the rest of the year.

• Charles Aránguiz tore his Achilles tendon in training on 20 August, while Hilbert (8 October, left knee) will miss the rest of the year. Seung-Woo Ryu, who has not played this season, has been absent since mid-October with an ankle problem.