Sky Deutschland were berated for showing “a lack of respect” at the weekend and it was hard to disagree: inflicting the heinous Heino as a guest on the unsuspecting viewers of its Sky90 talk show on Sunday night must rank as an all-time low for German football television (although this cringe-tastic aberration cannot be far behind).

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Schalke 04’s sporting director, Horst Heldt, who accused the TV channel of being out of order live on camera, did not have the patently clueless 77-year-old “singer” roped in to promote his new album in mind, however. Heldt was instead having a go at the Sky reporter Ecki Häuser for asking the manager, André Breitenreiter, about his widely reported sacking at the end of the season before the 3-0 defeat at Bayern Munich on Saturday. “You asked him five questions about that before kick-off and you couldn’t think of anything else,” Heldt confronted Häuser in a post-match interview, “you hardly asked anything about the game. You’re being disrespectful, to be honest.”

Breitenreiter, who has been under fire for weeks, was perhaps not the best person to be quizzed about the strong rumour that FC Augsburg miracle worker Markus Weinzierl is about to take over from him at the end of the season (“it’s a fact,” Häuser insisted). Understandably, the 42-year-old coach threatened to walk out of the interview. Heldt, too, was right to defend his man against the incessant speculation, claiming that the debate was “poisonous” in terms of Schalke’s attempt to push into Europe in the next four weeks. On Monday, Clemens Tönnies, the chairman of the advisory board and de-facto club boss, voiced his disapproval, as well. “We won’t let outsiders pretend that there’s a disquiet [in the club]. Sky were disrespectful, their so-called facts don’t exist. We’ve told them that. And we won’t take part in a debate about the manager, simply because the public expect that, either,” he told Neue Ruhr Zeitung.

Text-book circling of the wagons, you might say. But this goes deeper than that. As Heldt himself explained, the media were not the only ones causing trouble here. As ever, Schalke were doing a very fine job plunging themselves into chaos. Heldt grumbled he did not know who he was leaking the Weinzierl story to and complained that “others, who are not yet at Schalke, are always talking about Schalke – that’s not OK. They should keep quiet, and not talk about their contract starting on 1 June or being in charge of Schalke from 16 May.”

The “others” implied here is Christian Heidel, the 52-year-old Mainz 05 official who will succeed Heldt next season. The mentor of Jürgen Klopp and Thomas Tuchel last week confirmed that he would stop working for 05 after the last league game on 15 May. Heldt took that to mean that the new man would rock up immediately after the final, final whistle and was not best thrilled. “My contract runs until 30 June and no one has told me otherwise,” Heldt said, “I’m angry. It won’t happen that he’ll sit on my lap in my office.” To raise the awkward level even further, Heidel is the one behind Schalke’s attempt to sign Weinzierl, which makes Heldt’s position almost as untenable as Breitenreiter’s. Quite a few people continue to wonder why the former Stuttgart midfielder has not walked away already. “Gardening leave” is yet to become a thing in the Bundesliga.

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According to Heidel, the latest Royal Blues irritation is a misunderstanding. “I didn’t say I would take over on 16 May,” he pointed out. But even Heidel cannot deny that the transition towards a new regime has been extremely messy. “We are not helped by sniping from the sidelines,” Heldt said, “the future should be dealt with in the future, at least publicly. What’s being discussed behind closed doors has to stay there.”

In Gelsenkirchen the concept of closed doors and secrecy is yet to take hold, though. While Schalke are undoubtedly right to try somebody new to improve on the inconsistent Heldt years and his plethora of underwhelming coaching choices – Jens ‘The Jumper’ Keller, Roberto ‘Happy’ Di Matteo and now the dynamic but somewhat hapless Breitenreiter – there is less confidence that Heidel will be able to change Schalke before the club, Germany’s most rudderless by a mile, will change him. The way things have been going, it looks as if he has already begun to show mild symptoms of Schalke-itis, the highly-contagious, compulsive disclosure of sensitive information, a full month in advance of his first day at work.

Augsburg will fight for a hefty compensation for releasing Weinzierl, the most in-demand man on the German managerial market, from his contract three years early. And the Bavarians are not in the mood to expedite proceedings while they are still fighting against relegation. Breitenreiter, who has been unable to demonstrate that the can mould one of the league’s most expensive squads into a functioning team that would befit their ambitions and financial status – they were the 13th richest club in Europe last season, with revenues that exceeded those of Milan, Internazionale or Roma – will thus continue to coach as the lamest of lame ducks over the next four crucial weeks. Yes, it is another fine mess, or you might say: peak Schalke. They get it wrong even when they get it right.

Results: Hannover 2-0 Borussia Mönchengladbach, Bayer Leverkusen 3-0 Eintracht Frankfurt, Augsburg 1-0 Stuttgart, Werder Bremen 3-2 Wolfsburg, Darmstadt 2-0 Ingolstadt, Bayern Munich 3-0 Schalke, Borussia Dortmund 3-0 HSV, Mainz 2-3 Köln.