Eager to get back on track

There was something different on Wednesday morning’s agenda for the squad before training began, as they first gifted security guard Jürgen Oschmann, who has worked at the club since 2002, a signed shirt as an 80th birthday present, along with a round of ‘Happy Birthday’ to boot. This week’s training then got underway at Schenkendorffplatz in a highly-concentrated, focused manner. “Training was appropriately intense, the lads pushed really hard and wanted to show that they can perform better than they did against Köln,” Maximilian Mittelstädt gave his thoughts on the first 75-minute session completed.

Key point to take away: Eradicate errors

Following the warm-up and a Rondo which saw the squad split into two groups, the main part of today’s session encompassed a combination of passing and positioning drills. “Enjoy the session, but increase the tempo, too,” demanded head coach Tayfun Korkut of his players. The players were limited to a maximum of three touches during this drill, and if they managed to complete a certain numbers of consecutive passes, they won a point. Niklas Stark, Vladimír Darida & Co. worked intensively and put together some decent passes. The session finished with a finishing drill, which bought about a lot of enthusiasm and noise from the lads as training came to a close. “We analysed the last game in depth and discussed the mistakes we made – the boys won’t make them again, because they’re working hard to eradicate them. We absolutely want to win in Wolfsburg, and to do that we’ll need to put in a good performance,” said the 47-year-old.

Squad news: Individual trainers, workload management and quarantine

Absent from the session were Rune Jarstein, Dedryck Boyata, Fredrik Bjørkan, Stevan Jovetić (training individually), Peter Pekárik, Marco Richter (workload management) and birthday boy Ishak Belfodil (quarantine). Oliver Christensen is also currently in quarantine, having tested positive for Coronavirus. “It’s quite a short week. We’ll see at the end of it just who is ready to play, and we’re not ruling anyone out just yet,” the head coach gave his comments on the current personnel situation before going on to discuss the news surrounding two of our defenders in more detail. “With Fredrik and Dedryck, we’ll just have to keep checking up on them every day. I’m hopeful they’ll make quite a prompt return to team training, but we’ll just have to wait and see.”

For Korkut, his team and possible returning players, two more complete days of training lie in wait as they prepare for the match against VfL Wolfsburg (15th January, 15:30 CET). We need to stay on track and try to continue the development we’ve made as a side over the past few weeks going – that is our task,” the head coach made it clear. Thanks to Wednesday morning’s training session, a step closer to being able to return from Wolfsburg with three points has been taken.