Schalke’s fortune this season hasn’t been the best this season, that’s clear to see. In their opening three games they’ve drew one and lost their other two. On Wednesday it looked to have changed for the better when they held Chelsea to a draw at Stamford Bridge where Schalke somewhat outshone their opponents. But following today’s result they were brought back to reality where once against the case of Schalke’s performance was mistake after mistake after mistake. In the article we’ll go into mild depth about where the mistakes are in Schalke’s performances.
Firstly, the main people with ego’s in the team. I’ve said this all season. Its good to have a couple of characters in the dressing room and they do work for the time and perform when they do. But for Schalke it’s the complete opposite. Its been the same all season, the players with the ego’s aren’t defending when defending is needed and letting other players down. Neudstader against Chelsea, played his heart out. Notably when he got back on the line and defended. Kevin Prince Boateng, he’s a fantastic player with bags of ability but his attitude to the game is frustrating, the game against Eintracht Frankfurt epitomises the point being made, he jogs back not working for the team and then after the hour mark gets himself sent off for a meaningless foul. Even for his native Ghana he doesn’t put his heart into it, this past World Cup he got sent home for his attitude towards the coach and his ethic towards it. The same with Sidney Sam, the new signing hasn’t had the best of luck with injury but there is no doubting his ability. However, at Leverkusen his work-rate was good in parts, but at times during his spells he was left out of the squad for his attitude not being good enough notably for nearly five games under Sami Hyypia. The Ego’s in the team aren’t disrupting the team as such, they’re failing to help the team where help is needed which links in with the next point.
The next point is the defensive mistakes. It’s been brewing all of last season, this pre season has emerged this season. It seems to be an occurrence in every game this season for Schalke. Especially against Gladbach, which sometimes they got away with but on more than one occasion, did the Royal Blues pay the price for this mistake. It usually occurs when Keller’s men push too far forward and the remaining backline are left scampering for the ball, that is usually where they’re most fragile. It’s also occurs when they drop back defending, its either the two centre backs or the full backs who get sucked inside or sucked outside then they leave the defence stranded and the other teams, for example, Andre Hahn’s goal last Saturday where a diagonal through ball tore apart the whole left side of defence. It’s not just the movement of the other team that cause havoc among the team it’s the team’s positioning in general which cant be figured out whether its Kellers fault or the players fault, we’ll just have to put half the blame or three quarters of the blame onto the player at fault. It’s things like this that win silverware and not having a defensive structure is what Schalke lack. Individually the players are brilliant but together something is causing this problem. Another example is Kruse’s third goal for Gladbach last weekend, as you can see in this picture from this build up to the goal there back line is all over the place, we have one player too far back, one player too far forward and two players together. This links in with lack of communication and but also lack of structure. That doesn’t mean stay in flat back line 90 minutes of the game but communication really needs to be taken into account at this calamity of a backline not only once but was at hand for three of Gladbach’s four.
For Gladbach’s fourth, Matip is positioned as the left back and is yards off Hermann, Howedes in the centre back area who has only just got into the box and Ayhan who is with Hrgota and Raffael, the finisher, is costless no one around him with acres of space. This is one of the main factors of Schalke’s downfall and its what is causing them the most strife too.
This is only two faults in Schalke’s season, there are many underlying problems which can’t be expressed in one article but rest assured more problems with Schalke’s team which will rise to the surface in the near future.
Schalke currently sit in sixteenth in the Bundesliga and Jens Keller’s stint with the club seems ever more insecure, their next game will be against Bremen on Tuesday before the Revier derby against Borussia Dortmund on Saturday.