Four days ahead of game against FC Augsburg (Sunday, 15:30 CET), head-coach Tayfun Korkut and his men began with the intensive preparations for their second away game of the year – and that with the first session of the week on the newly laid pitch on the training grounds at the 'VfB Clubzentrum'. "The pitch is like a carpet – I am overjoyed," stated Erik Thommy following the publically open session. For the 23-year-old, not only the new surface will make the next few days very special. The VfB man grew up just 50 kilometres from Augsburg in the region of Günzburg and moved to FCA as an Under 17, where he remained, with the exception of loan spells at Jahn Regensburg and 1. FC Kaiserslautern, until making the permanent move to VfB just a few weeks ago. Whilst at FC Augsburg, Thommy made his Bundesliga debut in February 2014: "Of course I am looking forward to playing on my old stomping ground, but all that matters now is VfB and our success. I need to forget my personal history and perform on the pitch," explained Erik Thommy.
In FC Augsburg, whom VfB played out a 0-0 draw against when the sides met earlier in the season, Erik Thommy is expecting "an aggressive opponent!" The new Cannstatt Boy continued: "Augsburg approach every game as a team unit. They are very compact, tactically well-organised and extremely strong at home – which was made clear by their recent 3-0 home win over Eintracht Frankfurt. It will be a hard fought out battle." It’s a challenge that Erik Thommy and his team mates at VfB are ready to rise to. "We want to pick up where we left off with our recent results and continue to improve. We have a couple of days now to get ourselves ideally prepared for the up-coming opponent and we then have to see to it that we stick to and implement our own game-plan." In the next few days, Mario Gomez is also expected to re-join the team. The striker was excused from training on Wednesday due to a slight viral infection.
