Plenty of effort, not enough reward

“Bremen managed to score twice, despite only having three shots on goals. We had many more chances to score, but failed to take any unfortunately,” said Omar Mascarell. The midfielder explained that Schalke struggled to create any real chances in the first half, but managed to do better in the second 45. “You have to take these kinds of chances really,” said the Spaniard, who is still remaining positive: “We will carry on believing in ourselves though; we have a lot of good players.”

Schalke have only managed to score five goals in eight Bundesliga outings so far this season – way below their expectations. Christian Heidel also feels this is the case: “We aren’t scoring enough goals at moment, which is the biggest thing lacking in our game right now,” believes the sporting director, who feels the most important thing at the moment is to focus on climbing up the table. “To be higher up in the league, you need to be more efficient”, he acknowledged. Despite good chances for Amine Harit, Guido Burgstaller and Mark Uth, Schalke failed to score again. Guido Burgstaller was also frustrated with the result: “If you don’t score any goals, you won’t win any games,” said the Austrian. “Bremen managed to score twice, even though they didn’t make many chances”.

Need to take more chances and then win tight games again

The pattern of yesterday’s game is one that has repeated itself too often this season for Schalke. “We have had six games this season, which have been extremely close and could easily have ended differently. Out of those games, we have only won the one game against Mainz. We need to stop losing like this”, demanded Heidel. “We won more close encounters last season because we were clinical in front of goal. We shouldn’t necessarily have lost this game today.”

Domenico Tedesco felt that Bremen deserved the three points, mainly because they were more efficient and clinical. “We must not allow this defeat to get to us, because we didn’t actually play that badly,” stated the Schalke head coach. “With seven games in 23 days, there is no time to dwell on things.”

The lads will be back in action on Wednesday, as they will face Galatasaray on Matchday 3 of the Champions League (24/10, 21:00 CEST). “It will be a difficult game,” according to Omar Mascarell, who again sees the positives in an action-packed schedule: “I think it’s a good thing to have a lot of games in a short space of time in our current situation.”