VfB Stuttgart vs Schalke 04 Prediction, Odds, Best Bets - Bundesliga

VfB Stuttgart, eighth on 12 points, visit the Veltins Arena to face a Schalke 04 side seventeenth on 6 points and still searching for a first home goal of the season after four scoreless home matches.

The Matchup

Schalke 04 need a goal in their own stadium as badly as they need points when VfB Stuttgart visit the Veltins Arena on Saturday. Schalke sit seventeenth in the Bundesliga with 6 points from a 1-3-5 start, and they have played four home matches this season without scoring once. Stuttgart arrive eighth on 12 points with a 4-0-5 record and 15 goals scored against 15 conceded, and they carry the one proven finisher in this fixture.

That finisher is Ermedin Demirovic, who leads Stuttgart with 5 goals in 9 appearances on a team-high 24 shots. He scored twice against Borussia Mönchengladbach on October 23 and twice more in the 4-2 win at Bayer Leverkusen on October 31, back to back league starts that carried Stuttgart's attack almost on their own. Bilal El Khannouss has 2 goals, including one in that Leverkusen win, and Maximilian Mittelstädt has 2 goals and 1 assist from the left side, the latest of them the only goal in the 1-0 win over Werder Bremen on November 7.

Deniz Undav, expected to start up front, has taken 17 shots and added 1 assist, so Stuttgart create enough even on the days Demirovic starts on the bench, as he did against Werder before coming on. The catch is at the other end. Stuttgart have conceded 10 goals in five away matches, including 5 at Bayern Munich, and their road games rarely stay quiet for long.

Schalke's season is the opposite problem, and it is a strange one. The defending has mostly held up. Schalke have conceded 11 goals in nine matches and only 3 in four at home, and goalkeeper Loris Karius has already made 46 saves, a workload that tells you how much traffic his defense still absorbs. The attack has simply vanished.

Schalke have scored 5 goals in nine matches, nobody in the squad has more than 1, and the home scoresheet is completely blank. Adil Aouchiche has 1 goal on a team-high 20 shots, Kenan Karaman has 1, scored in the 2-1 defeat at SC Freiburg, and defender Robin Gosens has 1. Junior Adamu, who has 1 goal and 1 assist, came off the bench to score in the 2-1 defeat at TSG Hoffenheim last time out, and that late goal is close to the whole of Schalke's recent attacking story.

Neither club has named its side yet. Schalke are expected to stay close to the team that played at Hoffenheim, with Karius in goal behind Hasan Kurucay and Nikola Katic, and Karaman, Aouchiche and Hwang Hee-Chan, who has 1 assist this season, expected to start in the attacking places, with Adamu expected to feature again after his goal off the bench. Stuttgart are expected to keep the back three from the Werder win in front of Dennis Seimen, with Undav and El Khannouss expected to start and Demirovic expected to feature after his appearance off the bench in that match.

Key Factors

The numbers at this ground point one way. Schalke's four home matches have produced 3 goals in total, scoreless draws with Bayern Munich and SV Elversberg, a 1-0 defeat against Mainz and a 2-0 defeat against RB Leipzig.

Across the last five league matches Schalke have scored 2 goals and conceded 7, while Stuttgart have scored 9 and conceded 6 in theirs, so the visitors bring the form and the hosts bring the habit of keeping their own stadium quiet. Both sides also come back from the international break rested, Stuttgart after 14 days and Schalke after 13, and a cagey restart suits two teams whose first job is not to give the game away early.

The honest counterpoint is Stuttgart themselves, because their away matches have been anything but quiet. Stuttgart's five road games have produced 18 goals, 8 scored and 10 conceded, and a side that won 4-2 at Leverkusen three weeks ago can score in bunches when Demirovic gets service.

If Stuttgart score early at the Veltins Arena, Schalke have to chase a game at home for once, and a chasing Schalke side leaves the spaces that turn a tight match into a trade of chances. Three goals is a live outcome on that script, and on this line a three-goal game still pays on half the stake, with the other half pushed.

What keeps the read together is that Schalke's chase has produced nothing all season. Chasing is exactly what they did at Freiburg and at Hoffenheim, and it brought 1 goal each time, against a Freiburg side that has conceded 10 goals this season and a Hoffenheim side that has conceded 17.

Karius and his back line give Schalke a platform in every home match. The platform is not the problem, and until Schalke find a finisher, every visitor who keeps its shape at the Veltins Arena is playing a low-scoring game whether it wants to or not.

Every pick is published with its line before the game. Odds via consensus sportsbooks at time of writing and move constantly. Must be 21+. If gambling is a problem, call or text 1-800-GAMBLER.