Football is quite unpredictable and that is a big part on why it is a great entertaining sport.
Wolfsburg had a disastrous pre-season with their new coach Mark Van Bommel in charge. Out of 7 friendlies, they’ve won one, drew one and lost five matches. 2 losses came from sides like Hansa Rostock and Holstein Keil. They’ve also been knocked out from the DFB Pokal in the first round, losing to Preussen Munster, a team in the 4th league (Regionalliga West).
However, everything changed for them once the Bundesliga season started. I haven’t watched any of their matches, but I always watch Bundesliga highlights and goals. Some of the Wolfsburg goals that I’ve seen were quite nice and some lucky ones as well.
Out of their first 6 matches in Bundesliga, they have won four, drew one and lost one (today), while they also drew against Lille away in the first match of CL.
They will surely be quite a tricky opponent for us because as usual, teams with a new coach and identity are very difficult to figure out. They are currently sitting 3rd in the league with only 3 points less than Bayern in the 1st place. What’s interesting is that they have scored the fewest goals out of the top 4 teams in the league table (8 goals) and have conceded as much as Bayern (5 goals), joint best defense. Bayern have scored 23 goals, Leverkusen have scored 16 and conceded 7, Dortmund have scored 17 and conceded 12.
This in my opinion signals that they are quite conservative in their style of play, but know how to beat a team and will do so if given the opportunity. Out of the strong teams in Bundesliga, they have beaten RB Leipzig so it is not that they have played the likes of Bayern, Dortmund, Leverkusen etc. but we won’t have it easy against them, especially as they are playing at home on Wednesday night.
I’d say we should try what worked vs. Valencia this time around, because I fear that Wolfsburg has enough quality and pace in their team to cause us a lot of issues if we field a similar eleven to how we usually do or how we were lined up tonight vs. Espanyol for example. The difference is that Espanyol never had the capacity to do any serious damage so that lineup and those tactics were good enough.