Released after six months! Mustafi’s Schalke disaster in numbers

Robin Bairner

• Updated: 25 May 2021 16:10 BST
• 2 min read

Former Arsenal defender Shkodran Mustafi was the headline name on the list as Schalke announced that 10 players will leave the club in the summer.

It has been a nightmare season for traditionally one of the Bundesliga’s biggest clubs. They will finish bottom of the table by a massive distance, having collected only 16 points from their 33 matches to date.

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Moreover, they have conceded 85 goals in these fixtures – upwards of 33% more of the Nundesliga’s next-worst defensive team. In terms of goals scored, they have mustered 25 – second worst in the division.

When they added Mustafi to their ranks from Arsenal in January, he was supposed to be an additional to stabilise them in the centre of the table.

The 29-year-old, however, only served to complicate their situation. Indeed, he had a high-profile clash with head coach Dimitrios Grammozis that saw him temporarily frozen out of the picture, and it is no surprise that after six months his deal has not been renewed.

Mustafi at Schalke

The tale of Mustafi’s tape in Schalke is a miserable one.

He played 12 games for the club, losing eight of those.

While Mustafi attempted on average one tackle a game, he won only 0.3 of these. In terms of ball retention, he completed around 80% of his passes, a poor number for a centre-back, where above 90% is commonplace in this statistic.

He did, however, fare well in terms of duels both aerially and on the ground.

Among the other players to depart Schalke this summer will be former Tottenham midfielder Benjamin Stambouli and Nabil Bentaleb. Schalke, meanwhile, are hopeful of retaining veteran attacker Klaas-Jan Huntelaar and Sead Kolasinac, another former Arsenal player, as they head into the 2.Bundesliga.