M'gladbach's defence under the microscope

53 goals let in

Borussia Mönchengladbach have conceded 53 goals across 34 Bundesliga games this season, and that number sits in your head because it should. A goal and a half every single match, all season, in a division where the bottom half is unforgiving. For a club that built its identity across decades on defensive solidity, on pressing, on making themselves genuinely hard to beat, this is a rough thing to look at.

Nico Elvedi is the name you start with when you're talking about what holds this back line together. He's been around long enough to know what the standard looks like, and when Gladbach defend well, it tends to run through him. Kevin Diks and Joseph Scally operate in the wider defensive positions, and both have had games where they've looked capable, Scally in particular carries himself with a composure that doesn't always match his age. But capable games don't fix a goals-against column of 53. Something keeps giving, whether it's the press breaking down or the shape shifting in the final twenty minutes of tight games, and when a defence concedes that freely over a full campaign, the problem isn't one bad night.

Between the posts, Tobias Sippel and Moritz Nicolas have shared duties. I'm not going to pretend I can rank one above the other without knowing exactly how the minutes broke down. What I can say is that a goalkeeper playing behind a line that leaks 53 goals doesn't get to feel comfortable, whoever he is. You're constantly cleaning up, constantly called on when the structure has already gone wrong. That's a grinding way to spend a season. The M'gladbach club hub has the fuller picture on squad usage if you want to dig into that.

Twelfth and probably grateful for it

Thirty-eight points, twelfth place. In an 18-team table that puts you seven clear of the bottom three. enough breathing room to avoid the real horror, not enough to pretend this was a respectable season. There's a gap above them too. The top half feels genuinely far away when you've got a goal difference of minus eleven dragging at everything.

Twelfth is the kind of position that gets described as 'comfortable mid-table' and that framing drives me slightly mad, because there's nothing comfortable about it. You've finished closer to relegation than to Europe. You've spent the season watching the table and doing maths you'd rather not be doing. Our predictions had Gladbach somewhere around here in pre-season, which tells you what the general expectation was, and meeting low expectations is not the same as having a good year.

42 goals and no one obvious to blame it on

Here's the odd thing about Gladbach's attacking numbers. Forty-two goals for the season isn't nothing. It's not a side that sat deep and hoped to nick results. And yet. no, I said I wouldn't use that, the goals came from somewhere diffuse, spread around, no single player clearly owning the responsibility.

Shuto Machino and Haris Tabaković are the names listed as attackers, and Jan Urbich alongside them. Tabaković arrived with a reputation as a finisher and Machino brings movement that can stretch defences, but the goals-for figure of 42 averaged across 34 games is roughly 1.24 per match. Fine. Functional. Not the kind of output that wins you the upper half of the table. The forward line produced enough to keep results alive but not enough to paper over what was happening at the other end, and that's the crux of it. You can't keep scoring twice and conceding three and expect the points to stack up.

What I'd want to see next season. and this is just me talking, is one of those three attackers making the position genuinely theirs. Machino's movement is interesting. Whether he can turn that into consistent goals in the Bundesliga is still an open question, and Betway review markets will tell you how the bookmakers have priced Gladbach's attacking output going into next year, which is worth a glance if you're interested in that kind of thing.

The goalkeeper question doesn't go away

Come back to the back line, because this is where the season was lost.

Elvedi, Diks, Scally. three defenders who, on paper, no, I keep doing that. Three defenders who have the tools. Elvedi reads the game. Diks offers something going forward. Scally has shown in flashes that he could be a proper Bundesliga full-back for years. But the system around them has to do more. Fifty-three goals conceded is a collective failure, not a case of pointing at one position or one player and saying that's your problem.

Nicolas and Sippel are both capable goalkeepers at this level. That's not false comfort, it's just true. What they've been asked to do this season. bail out a high line that gets caught, cover for pressing traps that don't close, react when the shape opens up in transition, that's a big ask. And the ask doesn't shrink just because the season is over. If the defensive structure doesn't get cleaner in pre-season, if the distances between lines don't tighten, whoever starts in goal next August is going to be back in that same position: working hard, conceding often, and finishing twelfth again.

Scally is young enough that the next phase genuinely belongs to him if he wants it. what he does with a full pre-season and a coach who trusts him in the system could change the entire feel of this defence.