FC Schalke 04 winless run, goalkeeper Loris Karius and squad injury problems, Digi Mart USA News (Gelsenkirchen, Germany): Schalke’s run of good fortune from last season has dried up. In the promotion year, the club often won narrowly, its second balls frequently fell to Königsblau players, and euphoria knew no bounds.
Now the situation has reversed, and everything seems to be going against the club from Gelsenkirchen.
Coach Miron Muslic, 44, has seen Schalke go seven matches without a win. Every week, he and the team face new problems and challenges.
Schalke has not won since the start of this skid, and the defensive setbacks have been compounded by individual mistakes.
Goalkeeper Loris Karius, 33, has been the outstanding Schalke player on the pitch for months. Muslic said: “If one of them is allowed to make a big mistake, it is Loris.
I cannot remember a single error from him in the past 16 months. He has been Man of the Match several times.
If it can happen to anyone, it can happen to him.” Without his saves, Schalke would not share the league’s fourth-best defense with Paderborn.
It is more bitter, however, when key performers now also cost goals through careless mistakes. Karius and Robin Gosens, 32, collided in a recent match, and both had to be substituted.
Gosens faces a long absence.
Injuries have also hit hard. Last season, Schalke managed a long list of absences, but this season the problem has become more severe.
Muslic has changed at least one starter in every competitive match so far. Currently, nine players, including Karius, are unavailable to the coach.
This has steadily reduced the quality of the bench. Club officials will be under pressure during the winter break to address the situation and reduce the number of high-earning players who contribute little or nothing, and to strengthen the squad with reliable availability.
In the 0:1 defeat to Hoffenheim, Schalke suddenly produced a flurry of attacks, taking 23 shots. In the previous three matches combined, the team had managed 24 attempts.
Under the new system, Schalke finally began creating dangerous chances more regularly, and Junior Adamu, 25, helped end the team’s goalscoring crisis. The Austrian international, with ten appearances, scored Schalke’s first league striker goal of the season.
This offers hope, but such efforts must happen far more often for points to follow, because even 50 shots are of limited use if 49 miss the target and the opponent is invited to counterattack.
