With an away game in Augsburg, VfB begins the year 2025—and will immediately find themselves back in the thick of consecutive midweek fixtures. Not only on Sunday will effort and concentration be key.
Admittedly, the 0–1 loss to St. Pauli before Christmas still stings. Workload or injuries aside: conceding such a scrappy goal and then being unable to break down a focused newly-promoted side to secure a spot in European competition over the winter break is frustrating and doesn’t do justice to the team’s capabilities. At the same time, that game must serve as motivation for the rest of the season. Motivation in a positive sense: that you can’t just coast through any game. With the return of Deniz Undav, Jamie Leweling, and Ameen Al-Dakhil, along with the signing of Jacob Bruun Larsen, and considering the team has had three weeks without competitive matches, the excuses that could be made for the loss to Hamburg are now gone.
Alexander Wehrle referred to 2025 as a “year of opportunities” in the club’s media channels, and when it comes to January, he’s absolutely right. VfB doesn’t have an easy opening schedule, but neither is it one they couldn’t handle with the right level of commitment. What will be crucial is how the team approaches the game against Augsburg. If we assume again that passes will simply find their target and that the ball will end up in the net through sheer individual quality, it will be difficult—even in Augsburg. The team has been training since January 2, for ten days now, and hopefully, they’ve found ways to effectively counter challenging teams like Augsburg.
Personnel Situation
Undav, Leweling, and Al-Dakhil are, as mentioned, ready to play, although they likely won’t play full matches considering the weeks ahead. Justin Diehl, El Bilal, and Daxo Zagadou remain unavailable, and Luca Raimund has now joined the injury list after getting hurt shortly after returning to the team.
Possible Lineup
For starters, I would give the players who were the core of the team before the winter break a chance to prove themselves. I’m curious to see if the return of Karazor, who missed the St. Pauli match due to illness, will make a difference in midfield. Führich and Millot are guaranteed spots, Woltemade is in improving form, and Demirovic will surely be motivated to face his former club—and hopefully, luck will be on his side this time.
Statistics
This will be the 23rd Bundesliga meeting between the two clubs, along with four matches in the 2nd Bundesliga South in the 1970s. VfB slightly leads the head-to-head record with 11 wins to Augsburg’s nine and has also won the last two encounters.
Augsburg has conceded the fourth-most goals in the league, behind Kiel, Bochum, and Heidenheim, with the 1–5 loss in Kiel before Christmas particularly damaging. In post-shot expected goals, Augsburg fares even worse than VfB. In November and December, they managed just one league win—against Bochum—but they’ve also defeated Dortmund and Gladbach at home. Their top scorer is Philip Tietz with five goals, and VfB must also watch out for Alexis Claude-Maurice and Samuel Essende. However, Augsburg has scored just 17 goals in 15 matches, the fourth-lowest in the league.
Interestingly, Augsburg has the third-most yellow cards in the league, but their foul count isn’t nearly as high as their competitors. In all running statistics, Augsburg ranks toward the lower end of the table—VfB does too—and they don’t have particularly high ball possession or a strong pass completion rate.
Conclusion
The yellow card statistic might be the most telling. These aren’t always for fouls, but also for other small provocations intended to disrupt a favored team’s rhythm. The team must be alert from the very beginning and cannot rely solely on their quality. At the same time, we finally have the option to make strong offensive substitutions later in the game.
I also hope Ameen Al-Dakhil will show in the coming weeks why we spent nine million euros on him, so we can rotate more effectively in defense. After all, two more games await in the next seven days.
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