Rot-Weiss Essen has arrived in reality. After a weak match in the 3rd division, the Essen team is where you would also rank them.

With a win in the 3rd division at SSV Ulm 1846, Rot-Weiss Essen would have jumped to third place. Perhaps the first people would have started talking about promotion to the 2nd Bundesliga.

The 90 minutes in the Donaustadion proved why this is completely out of touch with reality, regardless of the result in Ulm. If everything goes right, RWE wins games in the league. If everything doesn’t go right, it looks like Ulm. The fact is: RWE can be satisfied with the way the season has gone so far.

Nine points after seven games is about what one would have expected from the team. And more than there were at this point a year ago. There, it was six points after the first win against Aue on the seventh matchday.

Three points more and already some insights. On the positive side, there have been several good games so far, the 90 minutes in Ulm were pretty bad for the first time and RWE left the pitch as a clearly deserved loser for the first time.

It was also clear that the new signings are moving RWE forward. All in all, the squad seems to promise more in terms of quality than the personnel in the last season.

Defensively, the Essen team is pretty hard to break down. Before the matchday, RWE had the best defence with Dynamo Dresden. The 0:1 in Ulm was the first goal Jakob Golz conceded after 542 minutes. You seem to be able to rely on your work against the ball, even if there was a lot of room for improvement here in Ulm.

Let’s move on to Essen’s main problem: they have not scored enough points from their decent performances so far. This is mainly due to the Dabrowski team’s offensive.

Here, Essen could not get past the rudiments. Nothing at all has happened at the front. Moussa Doumbouya and Ron Berlinski, who have shared the starting positions in the centre of attack so far, have not scored a goal after seven games together. Leonardo Vonic, who came from Nuremberg with the recommendation of a double-digit Regionalliga tally (22 goals), is also waiting for his first scorer.

And the line behind them? Marvin Obuz, Isaiah Young, Torben Müsel, the currently injured Thomas Eisfeld, they have all had their playing time, but they are all far from being sustainably convincing.