Köln dominates but can't finish, held scoreless by Schalke 04

There were shots off the post, eight minutes of first-half stoppage time and as many as five injury-forced substitutions, but the scoreboard never budged: 1. FC Köln and FC Schalke 04 played to a 0-0 draw at RheinEnergieSTADION in a Bundesliga clash that produced far more chances than goals.

Köln took control of the ball from the opening whistle and turned that into attacking pressure, dominating possession and carving out the first big chance in the 8th minute, when Hwang Hee-Chan headed a Robin Gosens cross from the middle of the box just wide of the right post. From there, the match turned into a steady stream of corners and shots that couldn't find the target: Junior Adamu, Nikola Katic, Saïd El Mala and Ísak Jóhannesson all tried their luck in the first twenty minutes without success. Schalke answered with chances of their own from Adil Aouchiche and Soufiane El-Faouzi, both narrowly off target.

The first half was disrupted by injuries: Linton Maina forced a stoppage in the 24th minute, and later, in the 37th, Robin Gosens went down as well, which ended up forcing Schalke 04 into a double substitution before the break, bringing on Janik Bachmann and Vitalie Becker. With stoppage time stretched to eight minutes, Mikey Moore had two chances before the halftime whistle, but the score remained level at the break.

A back-and-forth second half with nothing to show for it

The second half picked up where the first left off: Junior Adamu tried a header right after the restart, and Köln answered with attempts from Junior Dina Ebimbe and Saïd El Mala. The game opened up as the minutes wore on, with Marius Bülter growing more involved down Köln's flank, though the shots kept missing the back of the net. The clearest chance of the entire match came in the 78th minute, when Satoshi Tanaka struck the right post with an angled shot from the right, set up by Janik Bachmann: the crossbar bailed out Köln on the one shot that truly came close to a goal.

With yellow cards piling up late (Tom Krauß, Junior Dina Ebimbe, Luka Lochoshvili, Hasan Kuruçay and Vitalie Becker all picked one up) and more injury substitutions, including Joël Schmied coming on for Lochoshvili, the match fizzled out without either side finding the breakthrough.

What the numbers say

Köln was the sharper side throughout the match, and the stats back that up clearly:

That edge also shows up in the post-match xG calculated from the match's shots: 1.22 for Köln against 0.53 for Schalke 04, a gap that confirms the home side created more and better chances, even if it wasn't enough to turn into goals.

The result also fell short of what we projected beforehand, when we gave Köln a 44% chance of winning, Schalke 04 a 26% chance and the draw a 30% chance, with expected goals of 1.44 for the home side and 1.05 for the visitors. The scoreless draw ended up being the least likely of the three outcomes, and the expected goals we had going into the match, a combined 2.49, ended up well off from what actually played out on the field.

In the standings, the draw leaves Köln in 11th place with 8 points through 7 matches played (2 wins, 2 draws, 3 losses), while Schalke 04 sits in 16th place with 6 points from the same number of matches (1 win, 3 draws, 3 losses). The gap between the two sides in the table is just 2 points, a fitting reflection of how even this match ended up being despite the home side's territorial dominance.