Hecking can´t fault willing Wolfsburg

Wolfsburg coach Dieter Hecking could not fault his players’ efforts as they were held 1-1 at home to mid-table Paderborn.

Wolves’ stalemate allowed Bayern Munich to open up a nine-point buffer at the helm of the Bundesliga, with Hecking’s men still comfortably second – six points above third-placed Bayer Leverkusen.

Hecking said their inability to break the resilience of Paderborn goalkeeper Lukas Kruse, who saved a first-half penalty taken by Ivan Perisic, was their only downfall.

“I cannot blame my team at all,” Hecking said. 

“Especially after the performance in Lille [in the UEFA Europa League] my team has played with a lot of patience and we’ve created a lot of goal scoring opportunities but we didn’t manage to beat Lukas Kruse for a second time. 

“I guess when we score the second goal we would not need to discuss about any things that happened on the pitch as we would have won the match then. 

“Nevertheless, we didn’t score a second time. 

“At the end of the game we weren’t able to take the big chances. That’s what we’ve got to criticise today. 

“We weren’t able to score the second goal but the team had the right attitude and willingness to win this match so I cannot blame them for that. 

“Therefore we’ve got to live with a point. Even for us it’s an important point. Points are always important although we wanted three of them today.”

Wolfsburg will fancy their chances of bouncing back to winning form for the remainder of 2014, with fixtures against bottom-half sides Borussia Dortmund and Cologne before their hosting of Bayern on December 30.