Holstein Kiel vs Schalke Predictions

• Holstein Kiel have won seven of their last eight 2.Bundesliga home contests.
• Schalke have failed to score in six of their last nine away games (all Bundesliga).
• Five of Holstein Kiel’s 11 home league wins last season were by 1-0.

Storks can stretch out Schalke’s misery

Holstein Kiel endured a bumpy start to their promotion bid when they were beaten 3-0 by St Pauli in the opening round of fixtures last weekend.

Last season’s third-place finishers were not as bad as the scoreline suggests, but they were just not quite as good as their hosts.

The Storks have a great chance to kickstart their campaign at home to a Schalke team that let themselves down at home to Hamburg in the curtain-raiser.

Despite taking the lead and dominating the early play, Konigsblauen coach Dimitrios Grammozis played it too cagily and saw his side gradually unpicked by the visitors.

They now travel to one of the toughest venues in the division to get a result with Holstein Kiel having won seven of their last eight at Holstein Stadion.

Schalke were poor travellers last year, failing to win any of their 17 Bundesliga away games, and we expect that to be the case again here.

They rarely managed to score away from Veltins-Arena, which makes the win to nil for Holstein Kiel tempting too.

We’re sticking with a straight win bet for the hosts and will hedge slightly by going for Kiel’s favourite 1-0 scoreline (five times at home last season) as a correct score play.