“It’s going to be hard work to defeat Wolfsburg,” said VfB head coach Sebastian Hoeneß in his press conference on Thursday afternoon. “VfL have had a very tough start to the season and done really well against the top teams. We shouldn’t let ourselves be deceived by the results alone.”
While his team can go into Saturday’s away match (kick-off 15:30 CEST) with plenty of confidence following the recent 5-1 victory against Borussia Dortmund, Wolfsburg’s performances have certainly been better than their current position of 13th suggests.
The Wolves were close to victory against Bayern Munich (2-3), Eintracht Frankfurt (1-2) and Bayer Leverkusen (3-4) but in the end went down to narrow defeats in all three. In their other game, head coach Ralph Hasenhüttl’s men won comfortably 2-0 at Holstein Kiel. “You can clearly see his imprint: Wolfsburg play with very high intensity, they’re strong at counter-pressing and they have players, especially in attack, who can bring real tempo on the pitch,” said Hoeneß, who then switched the focus to his own side.
Bitter blow for Zagadou
Speaking of attack, VfB also have real strength in depth there at the moment, with competition for places high. Hoeneß sees that as an advantage: “We’re glad it’s like that. We have a lot of matches and we always want to be at our best, so this situation is required.” Who will get the nod against Wolfsburg remains to be seen. VfB have one final training session on Friday before travelling to Lower Saxony.
On the personnel front, there is one piece of bad news to report. On Wednesday, Dan-Axel Zagadou suffered a knee injury in training, which definitely rules him out of Saturday’s match. The exact length of time the defender will be out for depends on the result of further tests. Hoeneß will again be without Leonidas Stergiou and Justin Diehl, while Ameen Al Dakhil, who recently returned to full training, sat out Thursday’s session due to illness.