Wolfsburg will be bidding to set a new Bundesliga record when they welcome Borussia Dortmund to the Volkswagen Arena on Saturday, although perhaps more importantly they will be looking to reel their opponents in by picking up the three points.
The Wolves are on a 29-game unbeaten run at home and avoiding defeat this Saturday would earn them a new league record of 30 games without losing in front of their own fans.
However, they trail the team they beat in June's DFB-Pokal final by seven points in the current standings and reducing that to four is their number one priority.
"We want to reduce the deficit on Dortmund and that makes this an eminently important game," said defender Christian Trasch to bundesliga.com.
"It's certainly not going to be easy. Dortmund have one of the best attacks in Europe so we're going to have to try to keep things tight across the park and not let Dortmund play their game.
"Then, we've got to build on our own strengths with our excellent transitions and try to get ourselves into good scoring positions."
Trasch's coach Dieter Hecking sees the clash between the sides sitting second and third as too close to call, saying it will come down to "nuances" who will get the three points.
"Games against Dortmund have always been tight and they've always been of a very high quality," he added at a press conference.
"Therefore there is no reason for us to make ourselves out to be smaller than we are, and we will show that on Saturday."
A good result would also be just the tonic for the Wolves ahead of their crucial Champions League tie with Manchester United at the same venue on Tuesday.
Dortmund need another form of tonic, one of a medicinal kind, to resolve a bout of illness which has wreaked havoc with Thomas Tuchel's defence.
Mats Hummels, Sokratis Papastathopoulos and Julian Weigl have all been struck by the mystery illness which is set to deprive Tuchel of key players for Saturday evening's big match.
"It's not nice, but it's not worrying," said Tuchel. "We are still very motivated to win there."
Victory for the Westphalians would take them 10 points clear of their hosts and it is that, rather than the eight-point deficit on league-leading Bayern Munich, which they are focusing on with three games left until the winter break.
Unlike Wolfsburg, Dortmund are not playing in the Champions League this season and it is their main objective to get back into Europe's elite club competition next season.
Source: PA-WIRE
