Vital win for Freiburg

Freiburg picked up a crucial three points in the battle for survival, winning 2-0 at home against Eintracht Braunschweig.

Freiburg picked up a crucial three points in the battle for survival, winning 2-0 at home against Eintracht Braunschweig. An own goal from Damir Vrancic and one from Julian Schuster moved Christian Streich's side out of the Bundesliga's bottom three with some room to breathe over their rivals below. Freiburg had the upper hand from the off in this relegation six-pointer and had the ball in the net, somewhat fortuitously, after eight minutes. Oliver Sorg's long, aimless throw-in from the right was bundled past Daniel Davari by team-mate Vrancic, who knew little about the bouncing ball. Braunschweig had come into the match off the back of a fine run of form, including wins over Mainz and Hannover and a draw at Bayer Leverkusen, but they rarely tested Freiburg in the first 30 minutes. An early injury to captain Dominik Kumbela summed up their afternoon and he was replaced by veteran Dennis Kruppke. A half-chance for Havard Nielsen, last week's derby hero, was not enough to put Freiburg on the back foot for a sustained period. After the break, Christian Streich's side doubled their advantage inside three minutes when Schuster's speculative shot from 35 yards took a wicked deflection off Emir Bickacic and beat a helpless Davari. Kruppke then struck the post from a 25-yard free-kick on the hour mark, with home goalkeeper Oliver Baumann rooted to the spot. Freiburg's attacking performance was being upstaged by Davari, who made a string of good saves to deny Admir Mehmedi, who also struck the crossbar with a fine effort. The Braunschweig keeper made two more fantastic saves in the last 15 minutes - one from Jonathan Schmid's deceptive free-kick and Mehmedi's back-post header. However, it was not enough to prevent the basement boys from going down at Freiburg, who kept their first home clean sheet of the season.