Yes, Keller has to have a good start if not he will lose all the goodwill and credit he built last year in a second. There are still a lot of fans who aren't convinced of him. We saw something similar with Slomka who was always called the "Co-Trainer" by a part of the fanbase (and Schnusenberg, the old Heckenschütze). The only player of our defense who got a lot of offers is Papadopoulus. There aren't all that many rumours about anybody else. If you talk about our backline the quality of the fullbacks is always questioned. There aren't any people who are really convinced of anybody there. The best discription you hear is adequate for Uchida, due to his good understanding with Farfan. That is even true for Kola, while he looked good on defense, he provided pretty much nothing on offense which is a big failure in the context of our tactical approach. Keller wants the fullbacks to move up pretty aggressively which is one reason why the defense often times looked shaky. A different one is our poor build up or short passing game. There were far to many counterattacks after a misplayed short passed. No defense looks good if that happens, especially if it happens repeatedly. The third problem were our defensive midfielders. Neustädter played horrible of a long stretch of the season, often times proving to be the deciding weak link. He can be much better though. That said even our CBs had too many brain farts, too. In the end if the problem continues for too long you have to question the general quality of the players. Don't think we are quiet there yet.
I think we're going to get into third or fourth, and that's half confidence in our side, and half not being convinced at all by other clubs. I love the Szalai addition (the days of Marica are finally gone) and think Draxler is poised for even more of a breakout than last season. As for the others, I think Leverkusen got weaker, plus if Kießling ever gets injured or out of form they're screwed. Freiburg have lost a lot of players, plus the extra EL competition. Frankfurt still don't have a striker, Hamburg does more schalke stuff than schalke in recent years. Gladbach will still have trouble scoring, as both Kruse and de Jong need service and Raffael and Herrmann for me are no more than decent BL players at this stage. Wolfsburg I could see as a legit contender, especially if Helmes can stay healthy for once. We still need another option for the wing though. Bastos wasn't great but he was a legit option.
Yeah, I see Wolfsburg and Leverkusen as our biggest competitors, too. Maybe Gisdol can turn around Hoffenheim. It wasn't the general quality of their team that got them into trouble. I also like Gladbach's transfers this season. I wouldn't underestimate them. Raffael fills their biggest hole and they weren't that far away. I'm pretty sure we will sign a replacement for Bastos after the way Heldt, Tönnies and Keller talked about it. I'm just not sure if the player will be any good or I'll be comfortable with the amount of money spent. Damn you Peter Peters!
Well, I think it's decently reasonable to assume we'll sell Papa at some point. I think its OK to consider that notion when you're getting the Bastos replacement.
I neither count a transfer of Papa nor the qualification for the CL as long as they aren't done. There are too many things that can change or go wrong. I would be fine with that approach if we had the financial reserves to do it but we don't.
Well even if we don't qualify for the CL we'll play in the EL group stage. This minimizes the impact of failing in the playoff round.
Not really. You earn far less in the EL. Well, it is something I have difficulties to accept that's why I sound like a broken record. Guess I try to be slient about it for a time. ^^
Didn't someone on here estimate that we only made 10 million euros less from the EL (when we made the quarter final) than we did from the CL last year? I know that's still 10 million euros, but still.
Yeah, looking at the data on the UEFA website, it looks like the difference between Champions league and Europa League is about 20 million euros for German teams. Looks like a good run in the EL gets about 15 million euros. A bad CL group stage nets about 25 million euros. A run like we had last year in the CL likely netted us 35 million euros. I will say that the German teams have the highest earning from Europa League games. That explains why they take it a little more seriously.
I actually think Kruse is more important than Raffael, but that's largely because i don't have as much faith in Raffael as Favre does, he seems far too inconsistent for a club with aspirations of taking the final CL spot and realistic goals of getting into the EL places. Also excited to see how Younes develops for them, that kid is just crafty.
Yes, I greatly appreciate this fact. "Big" teams from certain other leagues seem to regard EL as a punishment! Only say the first half today...glad to start things off with a win, but going to have to be a lot better than that against Bundesliga competition!
A lot of the BL teams struggled and didnt perform well in the cup too so I wouldnt draw any conclusions just yet.
Certainly never said I was drawing any conclusions, and also stand by what I did say...this team will have to play considerably better than they did in the first half today. Obviously, everyone likes the first round Pokal weekend for the upsets...but this was an awfully weak year for them. There were 7 total upsets (and Osnabrück over Aue is a pretty mild upset indeed), a bit of a letdown after last year's 10 upsets.
I really don't like to pull the arrogance or motivation card but this game was one where it fit and visibly so. Shouldn't distract from our usual problems though, weak fullbacks, not enough creativity, vulnerabilities by counterattacks and set pieces. At least I thought our build up and retention game was a tad better than last year. Not sure if that is something durable.
Well said. I'll add this: Keller has his job cut out for him. This team isn't perfect, but it has enough pieces to compete for that last Champions League automatic qualification spot. The onus is on Keller to put things together.
Well in my opinion, Schalke could easily take one of the first three places in Bundesliga, of course if nobody important gets injured. But I am worried about Champions League... Have you seen their potential opponents?
For those feeling more adventurous, the league prediction thread is here: https://www.bigsoccer.com/community/threads/2013-2014-bundesliga-standings-predictions.1991689/
Looks like all the big clubs will advance, if you look at the results so far in the third qualifying round of the group stage. That would mean we could play Fenerbahce, Eindhoven, Kharkiv, San Sebastian, Pacos de Ferreira. Guess Pacos de Ferreira looks easiest on paper. All the other clubs are more or less on the same level. We would probably be favourites but the difference isn't so big that win by default. Well, looking at Nöttingen there aren't many teams we would beat by default.
Fenerbahce did really well last season in the Europa League (reached the semis). They are very dangerous. Real Sociedad of course are dangerous but they lost Illaramendi to Real Madrid. The other teams are rubbish.