Schalke 04: Don’t disparage Markus Schubert for the flaws of the team

Markus Schubert, like every other Schalke man, did not enjoy the Revierderby, but that doesn’t mean he should be tossed aside.

Raise your hand if you had a good Revierderby. I don’t need to see any of you to know that no one is raising their hand. Every single Schalke player was terrible. No exceptions. But for some reason, a lot of the targeted grief is coming at Markus Schubert, the Royal Blue keeper.

Sure, Schubert saw four goals slip past him. But only one of those goals came from a clear and obvious mistake—the second goal. A failed clearance came right back at him and he was unable to prevent the damage from being done.

Even that goal had to go through a layer of defense to get back at Schubert, however, so I wouldn’t even say it is 100% on him.

Markus Schubert is still Schalke’s best choice

As a keeper, sometimes you can only be as good as the defense in front of you. Best example out there—Wojciech Szczesny. The Polish keeper was a massive question mark during his early years at Arsenal.

He goes to Juventus, now he’s one of the best goalkeepers in the world.

What changed? Szczesny didn’t change. He’s still Szczesny. The defense changed. He went from a porous and flimsy Arsenal defense to one of the best defenses in the world at Juventus. Just like that he goes from average with potential to be alright to world-class, elite, prolific, and all the superlatives you can imagine.

Schubert is a capable keeper. He’s quite good, actually. But if he is going to keep seeing attackers pierce this defense like parchment paper, he’s going to keep letting in goals. Look back at all of those goals—even the second—and look at the number of defenders who failed to slow the Dortmund attack.

Spoiler alert, it’s more than one each time.

So what’s Schubert supposed to do? He’s going to need time to acclimate into the squad and to grow with it, but that growth process would be the same no matter who was back there with this kind of defensive performance. Alexander Nubel would have succumbed to the same fate, I guarantee you of that.

When we return to action, don’t moan and groan that Schubert isn’t up for the job. He is. He just needs his defense to stop sucking so badly. Stay positive. Then he can start facing more realistic shots and making quality saves.