Eintracht Frankfurt vs Schalke 04 Predictions, Betting Tips, & Match Preview

Frankfurt’s 16th placed relegation play-off position finish was a surprise for many in the 2015/2016 Bundesliga season after their 9th place finish the season prior. Frankfurt narrowly avoided relegation with a 2-1 aggregate win over 2. Bundesliga side FC Nurnberg in the playoffs and their opening DFB Pokal (German League Cup) first round match last weekend wasn’t the most promising performance ahead of the new season. Frankfurt scraped through to the next round on penalties after 3. Liga side FC Magdeburg held them to a 1-1 draw during regular time. Coach Niko Kovac will hope that new signings centre forward Branimir Hrgota from Borussia M’gladbach, who shone on his debut, and loanee right-back Guillermo Varela will help his side into a more comfortable campaign this time around.

Schalke 04 head to Frankfurt with a new coach and a handful of promising new signings in an attempt to start their campaign with a win. Schalke’s aim this term will be to better their 5th place finish from last season and qualify for the the UEFA Champions League. After a successful four year stint at Augsburg, this tasks falls into the lap of Markus Weinzierl, who is the new Schalke boss. One of Weinzierl’s first moves of the summer was the signing of talented forward Breel Embolo from FC Basel, who showed on his debut in the German Cup what an exciting prospect he is. Embolo scored one of Schalke’s four goals in their convincing 4-1 win over fifth tier side FC Villingen.

Though the two sides played out a boring 0-0 draw when they met in February earlier this year, the influx of new talent, combined with the old, should make this an eventful affair. Frankfurt’s veteran forward Alexander Meier is bidding for a double-digit goal haul for a fifth time in six seasons – he scored twelve of Frankfurt’s thirty-four last season despite missing fifteen matches to injury. Meanwhile, Schalke’s veteran striker Klaas-Jan Huntelaar (80 goals in 159 appearances) has not lost any of his six matches against Frankfurt and has scored in the opening match in each of the last four seasons. Looking over both Schalke’s and Frankfurt’s end-of-season and preseason form (see statistics), this match has the potential to be one of the more exciting Bundesliga matches on Saturday.

As such, we feel that over 2.5 goals and both teams to score at 21/20 and Schalke 04 to win 3-1 at 16/1 are decent value bets for this match.