The Wolves' 3-1 success over Hannover on Saturday was not only the team's 13th Bundesliga victory of the season, but it also represented some semblance of revenge for the 2-1 derby defeat away from home earlier in the campaign. The 96ers again made life difficult for the Green-Whites today, and took the lead at the Volkswagen Arena, before VfL came storming back to take all three points.
Bruno Labbadia: "It was a tough match, as expected. We struggled to get into the game initially, which might have been down to the players we were missing. After about 20 minutes we started to find our feet, but then conceded the goal out of the blue. Our response to that was obviously important. Renato Steffen has a good sense of timing and scored a good header, even though he's not the tallest of players. It was important not to lose patience. We made a few mistakes, which we anticipated; the only question was how we would deal with them – and we did very well. Overall we deserved to win, but it was very hard work. We're very happy to have won."
Thomas Doll: "Congratulations to Wolfsburg. My boys did well and went 1-0 up, which is what we set out to do. We also managed to implement our tactical game plan well, but then we conceded a goal we shouldn't have. A tall player shouldn't be losing a header to a smaller player. Nevertheless, my team played well in the second half and we had one or two chances to take the lead again, but – like in recent games - we weren't able to make the most of them. We're not taking advantage of certain situations like we should be doing and at the end of the day we're left empty-handed. Wolfsburg were the clear favourites on paper and they deserved to win, especially looking at the last 15 minutes."
