Schalke's Stagnant Attack

Schalke finished 2nd in the Bundesliga last year. They are in the Champions League this year and generally have the 3rd most revenue among German clubs. All those are good things, these are not: they are 15th in the Bundesliga this year and their 5 goals are fewer than all but Mainz.

Their 13.7 shots are 6th in the league, but this is an illusion Michael, the number is not indicating a healthy attack. Look how often they are in front of goal:

Much closer to their spot on the table and basically among the dregs of the league. Maybe it's been a tough schedule?

Nope. Against their easiest opponents: Dusseldorf, Freiburg, and Mainz, Schalke are lagging far behind the normal opposition.

You can quibble with deep completions, they are not the be-all, end-all of a great attack. Some of you probably saw Dortmund up there and know they've got the most goals in the league and blew it off, but then inexplicably kept reading until now. For those in that category, listen up: Dortmund have a bit of that Favre magic, and by that I don't mean anything vague, but something specific: they are deadly efficient with their deep pass attempts:

Favre in the past has seemingly perfected when to try deep pass attempts to get maximum value out of them, Schalke this year have no such backstory. They are as inefficient as they are rarely seen around their opponents goal. What's wrong?

-It's nothing to do with their defense. Without the ball Schalke look quite good, forcing incompletions at roughly 5th or 6th in the league, forcing tougher than league average passes, and holding opponents deep in their own territory. Only 3 teams force opponents to play closer to their own goal. Only the Big 3 of Bayern, Dortmund and Leipzig and maybe Werder Bremen are clearly tougher than Schalke without the ball.

-So, no excuse there, they aren't struggling to get the ball back and aren't having to cover enormous amounts of ground. Let's look at a few basic maps

-We can see the lack of efficiency is concentrated around the opposition goal pretty much and that Schalke have been quite left sided-dominant in their attacks.

-Now we look at our zone breakdown because sometimes those simple maps can mislead us, yes even the numbers can mislead a reminder of just how chaotic and unreliable everything human in this world can be. A reminder of the zones with 0 being the opposition goal:

-First we see if they have any odd behavior moving through the zones. They don't really: they attempt to advance from each zone at about a league average rate. Bayern are the lowest at this stat, they pass within zones a ton before moving forward, while Leipzig are near the other end as they rush forward.

-Then we look at success rates. So here we are simply measuring how successful Schalke's passes are when they try to move forward a zone. Here we see big problems:

Not good, folks, not good. Basically across the board Schalke are in the bottom third of the league, and in the crucial zone 5 and zone 4 are basically relegation quality in completing these passes.

By player in these zones:

Schalke don't have a single player recording a league average forward completion % in either of these crucial zones in the middle of the field.

We see the main problem, they can't move the ball through the midfield and it's essentially a team-wide problem.

What Are They Trying To Do?

It's hard to really figure out if there's any sort of attacking plan when looking at how they pass the ball forward. Indicating this a team without any idea, WhoScored tells us they've already tried 5 quite different formations. Yes, Fahrmann loves to give it to Salif Sane, Sane tends to feed Caligiuri but Caligiuri is not a ball-progresser really, the guy wants to hit bombs. His 3 most common forward pass targets are Mark Uth, Breel Embolo and Guido Burgstaller, all who essentially play striker. That's not really a build-up plan: Goalie->CB->FB->striker.

It's honestly even hard to notice the "midfield" when you look at how Schalke are moving the ball around. Look at a list of players sorted by forward completions/90 whose average pass comes between 53 and 57 yards from goal, so it includes some fullbacks and some midfield players. Schalke's "midfielders" are all in white:

Only Bentaleb moves the ball forward even close to decent volume. Rudy and especially Serdar and McKinnie really struggle get anything going forward.

However, when you look a bit further forward there is someone who seems to actually be providing an outlet.

Bentaleb has completed 95 forward passes. The player he has completed the second most to is Amine Harit with 7. The player with the most? 21. When you look at left-back Hamza Mendyl, a similar story is told in the data. Bentaleb is the player he has completed 2nd-most forward passes to at 10, the most is 21 and the same player: Yevhen Konoplyanka. He is an absolute hub receiving the ball and moving it forward. Look at the size of his dot on the field below.

He doesn't always turn it into end product at the rate you'd like, but he does it a lot more than any other Schalke players. Konoplyanka's 2.7 deep completions per 90 rank 26th in the league, which doesn't sound great until you hear Schalke have only 2 players in the top 25, Amine Harit at 2.3 (40th) joins Yevhen. Any Schalke lineup that wants to get the ball in front of the opposition goal probably should include Harit but every Schalke lineup absolutely has to have Konoplyanka.

Short Term Fixes

-Get Konoplyanka in your lineup. He's the only one doing any sort of ball progression. He's your best player getting the ball into dangerous positions.

-Try Amine Harit more as your advanced midfielder. Suat Serdar and Franco di Santo aren't helping your attack at all, Harit shows signs of life.

-Play one striker. The total lack of service is a bigger problem than converting that into shots. Uth, Embolo, di Santo and Burgstaller are all doing similar things, jamming 2 of them up top as Schalke have done twice is not a good idea. I'd play Embolo. Can any of these guys play wide out right and not just actually play as a striker? If so, get them ready because you need shots and you need a right winger, right now you basically aren't using that part of the pitch.

-Work on what happens when Caliguiri gets the ball. Crossing or trying to find an attacker isn't the worst thing, but he should pass the ball to a midfield option more often. If he is going to be the main outlet for the centerbacks, he can't have a forward receiver list that looks like this:

That's not really a right back. That's a right-winger.

-Work on Rudy's role. The guy made the national team, but his performance so far with Schalke makes you wonder how exactly he made it. He is providing nothing offensively, surely there is more in there, maybe try him at right back with Caliguiri further forward?

-Some sort of lineup with Harit, Konoplyanka, Embolo, Caligiuri/Uth up top with Rudy/Mendyl at fullback and a midfield of Bentaleb/Mascarell is something I'd like to see.

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Schalke don't look anything like a Champions League team, they might get out of their group but this team is currently a mess. A solid defense isn't enough, they need to get their offense sorted out quickly and I've given them a roadmap to finding at least a path out of the morass.