Looking Around the League: The Enemy of my Enemy is... Schalke

One of the perils of scoreboard-watching is that you sometimes have to root for clubs you don’t necessarily like. This weekend, Borussia Dortmund relied on two hated clubs, RB Leipzig and Schalke, to take points away from their opponents in the race for the top four.

Let’s see how it went:

Results

Here are the results from Matchday 25 of the Bundesliga:

Augsburg 3-1 Borussia Monchengladbach

Wolfsburg 5-0 Schalke 04

Werder Bremen 1-3 Bayern Munich

Union Berlin 2-1 FC Koln

Mainz 1-0 SC Freiburg

Bayer Leverkusen 1-2 Arminia Bielefeld

RB Leipzig 1-1 Eintracht Frankfurt

VfB Stuttgart 2-0 TSG Hoffenheim

Standings

RB Leipzig Help Borussia Dortmund While Schalke, as Expected, are Useless

With three points secured against Hertha Berlin on Saturday, it was up to RB Leipzig and Schalke, clubs that BVB fans share little fondness for, to take points away from Eintracht Frankfurt and VFL Wolfsburg respectively. While Schalke predictably collapsed and were spanked off the park against the Wolves, RB Leipzig at least made Frankfurt drop two points.

Let’s start with our friends from Gelsenkirchen. It was only the second match of Dimitrios Grammozis’s tenure with Schalke. While he led Schalke to a 0-0 draw with Mainz in his first match last weekend, he was on the receiving end of his first beatdown, with his side suffering a 5-0 beatdown at Wolfsburg’s hands. Schalke’s performance was dire from start to finish. It started in a manner very representative of Schalke’s demise: an own goal by an overpaid and underperforming outcast from a larger club:

Thankfully, while Schalke were of no use to BVB this weekend, RB Leipzig helped out Dortmund by forcing Eintracht Frankfurt to drop points. Leipzig actually had a chance to take all three points after taking the lead in the 46th minute from a goal by Emil Forsberg. Daichi Kamada equalized for Frankfurt 15 minutes later. The score wouldn’t change from there.

As a result of these two games, Borussia Dortmund are now only two points behind Eintracht Frankfurt in the race for the top four. You’ll also notice in the table above that BVB sit two points above Bayer Leverkusen. While Peter Bosz’s squad has a golden opportunity to leapfrog BVB in the table, with a match against Arminia Bielefeld on Sunday morning, Die Werkself instead collapsed, surrendering two goals en route to a 2-1 defeat to the relegation-fighters. With this win, Bielefeld jumped above Hertha Berlin, out of the relegation zone.

In other news, future Borussia Dortmund manager Marco Rose’s current team, Borussia Monchengladbach, is in freefall. While they may have been challenging for the top four at the beginning of the season, the Foals have utterly collapsed and have now sunk to 10th place in the Bundesliga, thanks to a 3-1 defeat to Augsburg.

Your Thoughts

How did it feel having to root for both RB Leipzig AND Schalke this weekend?