Third away outing of the 2022/23 Bundesliga season, third Champions League team: on Saturday 10 September (kick-off 15:30 CEST), the Wolves travel to Eintracht Frankfurt. Ahead of the meeting with his former club, VfL head coach Niko Kovac faced the media as usual on Thursday, answering questions on…
… the league table: “Being second from bottom is not nice to look at and bothers me. Nevertheless, it’s only a snapshot. With one or two wins, these things can quickly change in football, but first you have to achieve these wins. You can’t do that by just praying and hoping. You have to be productive and force it.”
… team news: “The game comes too soon for Patrick Wimmer, but he might be back next week. Yannick [Gerhardt] is pain-free on the whole and has no problems, but because of how long he’s been out we need to get him back up to speed and increase the intensity. I think he’ll be fully fit after the international break."
… the requirements in the game: “Football has become incredibly dynamic and aggressive. It’s important to look for physical contact. That doesn’t mean I have to chop down someone, but I can knock him off balance and force errors. So this is what it’s about: we have to look for physical contact, help each other and, most of all, work in both directions – forward and back.”
… lessons from the last few weeks: “We need to reduce our mistakes and work together as a team without the ball. The players have to be there for each other so that we allow the opposition as few goalscoring opportunities as possible. That’s what we need to work on and what we have worked on. I hope we’re now learning from what we’ve done wrong.”
