Mainz The Ultimate Party Spoilers; 2 games; 0 points!

Ok… Now I don’t know where to start… with me enduring a bad day as I was trying to finalize a task for my work that kept me up till 3 am or with the cruelest of false dawns that all Wolfsburg fans had to go through as they watched their euphoria about the signing of Diego getting cruelly extinguished by the absurd events of the second half against FSV Mainz.

McClaren cutting an animated figure

Since this is a football blog after all, we will only discuss the Wolves horrible start to the season. To keep everything in perspective, in each of the two games we played this season, they were games of two halves. Against Bayern, the team was woeful in the first half but improved considerably in the second half, getting an equalizer and nearly nicking a win before the Schweinstieger’s injury time winner.

Yesterday on the other hand, we started the game in proactive fashion despite Mainz attempts to close us down at every turn with Diego showing some nice early touches. Dzeko managed to ghost in and capitalize on a poor clearance by the Mainz defense. Soon later, he added to his tally after combining athletically with Mandzukic and then the script for the match couldn’t get any better with Diego rounding the goalkeeper and scoring a third. The home support were in dreamland by then with only Rasmussen goal before the end of the half staining an imperious team performance and great result.

What happened afterwards is beyond comprehension as we gave away three cheap goals that were all due to individual and collective mistakes. For Mainz’s second goal, two of our players were easily found out by a piece of skill from Lewis Holtby who crossed for Soto to score. Didn’t I single out Holtby in yesterday’s post as the creative outlet in that team?! Benaglio should have really done better with their equalizing goal as he was easily beaten from distance. As for the crushing blow provided by the amusingly named Hungarian Szalai who received Zabavnik’s pass and turned Kjaer far too easily to score. If you want to relive the agony of yesterday’s game you can watch it here (enjoy!). This team seems to have a real problem in closing attackers down which is a mystery as we are supposed to be playing a 4-2-3-1 with two pivots shielding the back four. McClaren has a lot to do to improve the team’s defensive play as well as try to pick up the morale of the players as they find themselves rooted to the bottom of the table with no points to show after two games.
While anybody can be defeated away to Bayern. Mainz at home is a game we fully expect to win not to throw away after going 3-0 up after 30 mintues. It will be interesting to see how the team is going to respond this.
Have a much better day than yesterday!

Category: Wolfsburg Team News