The 94th minute of Werder’s Friday night clash with Augsburg last week gave Bremen striker Marvin Ducksch the perfect opportunity to finally break his Bundesliga scoring duck this season and ease the pressure building up on him. It would also have rescued an unlikely point for the Grün-Weißen, but alas he saw his spot kick saved by keeper Rafal Gikiewicz.
So, the goal drought of last season’s prolific striker goes on and to make matters worse his strike partner Niklas Füllkrug is the league’s joint leading scorer with five goals already.
The Füllkrug/ Ducksch partnership was one of the key factors in Werder’s successful promotion campaign last season from 2. Bundesliga with Füllkrug scoring nineteen And Ducksch bagging twenty. This season it seems that he can’t buy a goal as the bungled penalty last week indicates.
All strikers go through a goal drought sometime in their career and the fact that Werder are not reliant on his goals helps. His general all-round play has been great with Ole Werner making it clear that Ducksch is a guaranteed starter, and the lack of goals is no cause for concern.
“Marvin is a fundamentally important player for us, even if he doesn’t score” Werner explained. “Marvin has a very high value for the team because he initiates many situations going forward. I’m totally satisfied with him.
“Of course, I look at all the players and the tasks that the next opponent will present us with. But we would have to play completely differently if we played without Marvin Ducksch.”
It is not for want of trying either that Ducksch hasn’t found the back of the net yet. He ranks sixth overall in the entire Bundesliga for number of shots with eighteen. 66,7% of his efforts have been on target, although his overall xG is just 1.9.
He’s a confident player despite the zero next to his goals tally and it is just a matter of time before he breaks his scoring duck. Werder Bremen face Bayer Leverkusen this weekend and they have not exactly had an impenetrable back line thus far this season.
