It was the third defeat in the fourth home game of the season. VfL’s poor performance was compounded by a sending off, the captain’s fifth yellow card and harsh criticism from one of the most senior players.
It was the famous “used day” that the players took for the Bundesliga game against Werder Bremen. After seven games, VfL Wolfsburg is not only lagging miles behind in terms of their own expectations, but also in terms of their first home win. 2:4 against Werder – after a difficult start, they have only managed two wins against the cellar-dwellers Kiel (2:0) and Bochum (3:1) and a 13th place in the table, which in no way meets the club’s expectations.
Gerhardt: “A face that we must never show again”
After Tiago Tomas put them 1-0 up in the 19th minute, two events threw Wolfsburg off course. First, captain Maximilian Arnold, who fell on his head and back after half an hour in a duel with Bremen’s Romano Schmid, was forced off injured later in the game and, when substituted, received a fifth yellow card for delaying the game. Then Mitchell Weiser, son of former Wolfsburg player Patrick Weiser, scored in first-half injury time to level the scores.
“We decided during the break to stand compactly and not give Bremen any spaces,” reported midfielder Salih Özcan after the game. But the Dortmund loan player and his colleagues did exactly the opposite. ‘Especially in the second half, we showed a face that we absolutely must not show again,’ Yannick Gerhardt noted self-critically on DAZN. “We were too careless defensively and offensively, we had too much space. You can’t perform like that in the Bundesliga.”
When the goals were conceded, they were sometimes even outnumbered, and yet Werder always found the free man. ”We had no control. It felt like everyone was doing whatever they wanted.” Gerhardt, with 252 Bundesliga appearances one of the most experienced and – having joined VfL in 2016 – one of the longest-serving Wolfsburg players, came on for the injured Arnold, but was unable to prevent the disaster.
Gerhardt: “We always talk about a new beginning…”
The team reacted far too slowly in all parts of the team to the revving guests, who understood better and better how to prevent the hoped-for fast transition play via Jonas Wind, Tiago Tomas and Mohammed Amoura, which should lead to a few contacts to the goal. The sad highlight from Wolfsburg’s point of view: the red card for Patrick Wimmer, who had only been substituted a few minutes earlier and was then overly motivated against his Austrian compatriot Marco Grüll.
Ahead of the next northern derby at FC St. Pauli, where Wimmer and Arnold will join the list of absentees, the mood in Lower Saxony is at rock bottom after a sobering three home defeats in four matches in their own stadium. Gerhardt: “We’re always talking about new beginnings and good games.” That’s undoubtedly a goal worth striving for. “But at the end of the day, you need points. That’s what counts in the end. Now we have to get three points against St. Pauli. Of course, seven points from seven games is far too few. That’s not what we’re aiming for.”