What’s going on at Schalke 04? – team analysis

The fascinating thing about Schalke 04 is that it almost seems like, they’re breaking some kind of negative record every year. After the worst Rückrunde of their history, fans and players were just happy that this terrible campaign was finally over. Schalke 04 ultimately finished the season in 12^th position, having not won any of their last 16 matches. If it would have not been for their good first half of the season, the team of head coach David Wagner would have been in serious relegation trouble.

However, with the new season starting in September, there are several questions about the future of the Royal Blues. Can they leave the bad phase behind and (once again) start a new beginning? In this tactical analysis, we will try to find some answers to that question and point out what has to change.

Schalke’s disastrous trend

Schalke had a surprisingly good start and finished the first half of the season in 5^th position, which significantly increased expectations. David Wagner instantly implemented his very well-coordinated and high-intense pressing system, only allowing 9.97 passes per defensive action over the season. In addition to that, he made them one of the most effective counter-attacking teams in the first half of the season and it seemed his mission of rebuilding the club goes faster than expected.

Nevertheless, even in the first half of the season, their position in the league table was not always perfectly reflected by their performances. In other words: Schalke played worse than the league table suggested and were very lucky at times.  In fact, they significantly overperformed their xG-values on both ends of the pitch. According to Understat, they scored 7.51 goals more than they should have based on the quality of their chances created while they conceded 5.44 goals less. So, overall, excluding penalties, their xG-difference was -1.16 compared to their actual goal difference of +8.

An analysis of Schalke’s 5 game rolling average xG and xG conceded values not only indicates Schalke’s overperformance in the first half of the season but also their terrible second half of the season and the worrying trendline. Things started to rattle after their 5-0 loss against Bayern Munich on Matchday 19. Injuries, form crises, poor team performance and bad luck  all these factors ultimately contributed to Schalke playing the worst second half of the season in their history.

Lack of creativity

Even in the first half of the season, Schalke’s offensive approach was very much based on forcing mistakes and gambling on winning the ball in high areas of the pitch. They relied a lot on the individual strokes of genius of players like Harit or Serdar rather than having a collective idea of how to create chances. Their expected goals created of 34.8 was second-worst in the league and even worse than last year.

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