Schalke 04: Ahmed Kutucu could be capable Erling Haaland numbers

Schalke 04 has a lot of questions needing answers, but there’s only one answer they can turn to now, and it is long overdue.

For the rest of the season, David Wagner will be tasked with lifting up a rather downtrodden Schalke club. While there have been plenty of suspect situations at the club thus far across the spectrum, it’s the attack that is most in need of help and for Wagner, the only untapped resource is Ahmed Kutucu.

It’s what many have been saying for a long, long time, and it’s what many more will say from here on out. This attack is failing week in and week out. The reliance on Amine Harit has proved detrimental and unless we can find someone to give this attack a jolt, we may well be screwed.

Problem is, there are still eight matches between us and buying a potential solution, if we can even afford one then. Which means there’s only one option, and that option is what many felt was the only option months ago—Ahmed Kutucu.

Schalke needs to just give Ahmed Kutucu the ball

The simplest way to explain this is through the process of elimination. Guido Burgstaller has played 1149 Bundesliga minutes and has zero goals and one assist. That gives him a nice even 1149 minutes between goal contributions.

Benito Raman—who I still do think has a part to play in this, mind you—manages a bit higher than Burgstaller, with a goal contribution every 200 minutes. Not so bad. Michael Gregoritsch, who has only 462 minutes to his name (still more than Ahmed Kutucu), manages a goal contribution every 231 minutes.

Rabbit Matondo—who also still has a big part to play in all this—has one goal in 654 minutes for a grand total of one goal contribution every 654 minutes.

Ahmed Kutucu? Four goal contributions in 349 minutes. That’s one every 87.25 minutes without a single start to his name. Anyone who averages a goal contribution every 90 minutes or less—guess what?—is on pace to score a goal a match. Seeing as how Schalke have scored just one goal in their past seven Bundesliga matches for a grand total of a goal every 630 minutes, it’s safe to say that Ahmed Kutucu is way above what we can expect to see without Ahmed Kutucu.

349 minutes is a small sample size. That’s what’s so frustrating about it. We just don’t know what he’s capable of and until we do, there’s no telling what he is truly capable of. Maybe he can do what Erlind Haaland is doing.