Eintracht Frankfurt claimed their first home win of the Bundesliga season today at the expense of Hannover.
Goals from Nikos Liberopoulos and Alexander Meier did the damage at the Commerzbank Arena with Hannover's reply coming from the boot of Jiri Stajner.
The result sees Eintracht climb to ninth in the table, two places and four points better off than their opponents
Hannover made the brighter start and gave Oka Nikolov a scare after nine minutes with the ! home goalkeeper forced to parry away a 25-yard free-kick from Arnold Bruggink.
Eintracht responded with the opening goal after 24 minutes. A corner from Markus Steinhofer found Liberopoulos at the near post with the striker heading home from close range.
Nikolov was called upon again four minutes later to preserve his team's advantage by tipping over a header from Hanno Balitsch.
And the Eintracht goalkeeper made another vital save moments later, diving to his left to palm away a powerful strike from Stajner.
Hannover's performance deserved a goal but they had to wait until the 69th minute before finally getting back on level terms.
The home defence failed to pick up on a cross into the area by Jan Rosenthal, leaving an unmarked Stajner to stab the ball home.
Eintracht quickly picked themselves up from the blow and were back in front six minutes later thanks to Meier, who tapped home on the rebound after goalkeeper Florian Fromlowit! z had stopped a header from Liberopoulos.
The goal knoc! ked the fight out of Hannover, and they could have conceded another with eight minutes remaining but Ioannis Amanatidis headed Steinhofer's corner onto the roof of the net.
