Absolutely disagreed with you in this. You shall never use pre season result to forecast their future. You don't know whether they will play with the full squad during the pre season. We may be seeing some juniors to take a chance in the pre season. The better for you don't take the pre season result seriously. There may be the adjustment to happen in Leverkusen's squad as well. Impossible to believe pre season result will determine their future due those reasons.
Sure! Preseason matches are not a determinant of what the new season will look like. We've watched teams playing excellent games during their preseason outing but they fumbled when season starts. Preseason games gives the coach a privilege to test series of formation and their players ability, strength and weakness to know which area needs to be improved and work on before the actual season begins. Young players in the squad are usually given a chance to showcase their talents during preseason. Not only Leverkusen, every team should not be judged by their previous season performance and not even by preseason result.
I don't see no reason for any team to be considered to perform excellently when the league start after performing excellently in preseason, it quite an advantage for almost all the teams to see the playing pattern of others which I thought will be of help for them. If you are to judge by the performance of well performing team I should directly think about PSG against Chelsea which was a doubt for everyone. Beside the pre-season shouldn't be taken serious to avoid a lot of injuries which is why I will give 𝗘𝗥𝗜𝗞 𝗧𝗘𝗡 𝗛𝗔𝗚 benefit of doubt for not coming out strong, and again all does small team they played against also did that to market their players because that is the only opportunity they gotten to explore themselves since since minority watch their game, and it's comes to the preseason like this they cut many people attention that why they play with seriousness.