My apologies if I misunderstood your point, we are not traditionally a bunker and counter team. If you exclude this year,Tedesco only has a single year of first division coaching experience and only 11 matches in BL2 prior to last year, that is it. Last year when we surprised our opponents, Tedesco played a low block, defensive 3-4-3 which defended just outside the box and bypassed the midfield with long ball counter attacks or a high block 3-1-4-2 (Meyer in the -1-) which was based on possession, high press, and quick 3-touch transition attack.. The latter is more in our dna. The problem is that Schalke have no quality after losing Meyer and Goretzka and Heidel our TD has spent > E150MM in 3 years with very disappointing results. Heidel is considered a great moneyball manager and has a great eye for developing young coaching talent (Klopp, Tuchel, Tedesco??). Folks are questioning his eye for top notch talent, our Chairman suggested publicly that we may need to bring in a person with more fotballing expertise to support Heidel. This is the lowest quality squad that I can remember in my 12+ years as a true-royal-blue 04 fan.
FotMob had him rated at 7.7 for the match. That was third highest for both teams. He won the most duels in the match at 14 and had the assist.
This Schalke squad is not very good. I’d be kinda surprised if they finish top half of the table this year to be honest. They might, and hopefully will bounce back next year but they’ll need to either make some new signings or hope some youth players come up and change something.
So true. The ball is always late arriving or just a bit off, no matter who is attacking. Their lack of cohesiveness in their passing is as abysmal as I've ever seen.
They won't be bouncing back any time soon, but they won't be relegated this season. That's something.
Weston has a pretty good aerial game. I wonder if Tedesco has seen that in practice and that's why he's playing an attacking role in this situation without true established strikers? Regardless, it's pretty GD cool to see a 1.BL team roll out a strike pair like Schalke 04 did yesterday.
I think what Tedesco has seen in practice is a failed policy that lets very good players get away for very little to no money. Weston is a baller. He may not ever be a transcendent talent, but he is a good footballer who shows up every time and generally does good enough. When Tedesco has a hole in his line-up he writes WM in that spot. CB, RB, DM, CAM, B2B, SS, ... what's next ??
All the better for Weston. He'll continue to start and get far more experience in a relegation battle. As well as those CL matches (he has left).
On the bench with Haji Wright. 📋 Our final XI of the year 👇#VfBS04 #s04 pic.twitter.com/3wiHf6LPYd— FC Schalke 04 (@s04_en) December 22, 2018
Schalke winning big- good result for them. Wes came on at 60, with the score 1-0. 3-1 now, Wes with a yellow. Can't tell if he was involved in either goal. Haji on the field as well at 87', listed as an injury substitution.
wes came in and changed the game for schalke. controlled the midfield. sparked the possession that led to the corner that led to second goal. he and bentaleb are their best 2 cm. they need to stop playing serdar and rudy over him
McKennie had two good headers today, but not good enough to score. His arial game is, as noted above, becoming a real positive in an all around positive player. Glad to see him help with the Schalke victory today.