Darmstadt coach Dirk Schuster dismissed suggestions some of his players had deliberately got booked after five were ruled out of Saturday's trip to Bayern Munich with one-match bans.
A total of six Darmstadt players were booked for the fifth time this season in the weekend's 2-1 home defeat to Bayer Leverkusen, with four of those cards coming inside the final 10 minutes.
It means the Lilien -- who travel to relegation rivals Werder Bremen after facing the champions -- will be without captain Aytac Sulu, Jerome Gondorf, Marcel Heller, Peter Niemeyer and Konstantin Rausch in Munich.
Schuster, who said he hoped to be able to field a side "which at least tries to compete" with Bayern, said: "The one thing [the cards] has nothing to do with the other [the match at the Allianz Arena].
"We wouldn't have returned from Bayern with a clear away win."
Sulu added that "it does not matter in which game you are suspended" and said: "The last minutes were just really hectic."
Kicker reported that it was the first time since the introduction of a one-match ban for five yellow cards was introduced in the 1993-94 season that more than three of a club's players had missed the same Bundesliga match.
On Sunday, Leverkusen sporting director Rudi Voller told Sport1 he had confronted a Darmstadt employee who eavesdropped on his club's half-time team talk.
Darmstadt apologised for the incident and said the person in question was a volunteer who was not connected to the team.
"We will take appropriate measures to prevent it from happening again, and have already apologised to Leverkusen," present Rudiger Fritsch said.
"It's important to add that the person was not out to get information."