Niko Kovac’s heart may be ‘attached to Hertha’ but his surging Wolfsburg team showed them little mercy in a Bundesliga routWolves are built to thrive in bitter winter, so with the champions still struggling to de-ice the windscreen and get the motor running, who better to assume the role of Bayern for now? In a glacial Olympiastadion in Berlin on Tuesday, Wolfsburg flamed their hosts, Hertha, 5-0 to make it two wins, 11 goals scored and none conceded. They remain seventh but only three points off third place and now with a better goal difference, and defensive record, than any team beyond Bayern.They are imperious. It was Die Wölfe’s sixth league win in a row, and they’ve kept clean sheets...
A good start under Bruno Labbadia has festered optimism with Die Wölfe having already upstaged Leverkusen and SchalkeLooking into one’s crystal ball a fortnight ago, it would have been no surprise to learn that following the meeting between Bayer Leverkusen and Wolfsburg on the Bundesliga’s second weekend, one team would have six points in the bag, while the other would be waiting to get off the mark and preparing to spend the international break doing a spot of soul-searching. If you’d have seen Wolfsburg being the former and Leverkusen the latter, you might have been tempted to give the ball an extra polish. It may be just two games in but you can forgive those from Lower Saxony for feeling...
Wolfsburg’s continued plummet down the league has led to genuine fears they could finish bottom this seasonWhen Bruno Labbadia arrives in a new post, it’s with a certain label attached– that of relegation battle specialist, and it’s one well-earned in successful fights against the drop at Stuttgart and Hamburg. If there’s a bright side to be looked upon after a tough couple of opening weeks at Wolfsburg, with one point taken from his opening four games in charge, it’s that he has the perfect situation in which to fulfil that reputation.Saturday’s heartbreaking late defeat to high-flying Schalke, sealed by Robin Knoche’s unfortunate 86th-minute own goal, was hardly deserved but the result is very much the bottom line in Wolfsburg’s current...
Less than a month after what seemed a deeply underwhelming appointment, it has begun to seem a brighter future is possibleThe fabled ‘new manager bounce’ is one thing. Stuttgart winning away, though? That’s something else entirely and after a first victory on the road since winning promotion back to the top flight, Tayfun Korkut is earning the right to be taken seriously.As the final whistle went on Sunday’s victory at overachieving Augsburg, there was a genuine sense of achievement. Stuttgart’s players celebrated not so much, it seemed, for getting one over near neighbours in Swabia but for the sensation that maybe a corner really has been turned. It has long been received wisdom that only maintaining their strong home form...
A 5-0 thrashing at Dortmund could have been worse, even with a dubious VAR decision, and there are already fears of a situation spinning out of controlJörg Schmadtke rushed out to the Sky truck in the TV compound to pore over every possible angle – and to check his eyes weren’t deceiving him. By that point, the Köln sporting director had already been on the Signal Iduna Park pitch, shoulder to shoulder with the coach, Peter Stöger, protesting to the referee, Patrick Ittrich, over the award by VAR of Borussia Dortmund’s second goal. Before any more fingers start pointing at Effzee about an anarchic end to a chaotic week, we should add that this was a reasonable moment for both...