Deja Vu.. another bad start to the Bundesliga Season

You've seen this before haven't you, you must have if you are a Bayern fan.  Two years with Van Gaal, the season with Klinsmann, yet again Bayern start the season in poor form..  a loss at home vs Borussia Monchengladbach.  I am not overreacting about the loss, as it's only the first match of the season.  However a lot of what I saw was dissapointing.  Off the ball movement was non-existant, players just expected someone to do it all themselves or merely a two player combination to get a goal.. or perhaps the amount of crosses coming in which hardly were effective bar 3 occasions all match (there were over 20 crosses).  The safe passing was also discouraging, Bayern was playing it safe all match vs a team that finished 16th last season in the Bundesliga and at home, never anything creative but all predictable which made it easier to stop.  The amount of hopeless crosses into the box was getting more and more apparent that Bayern lacked any real ideas.

 Boateng dissapoints first match of the season

Another tactical change was the positioning of the forward line, they were allowing BMG during the entire match to pass the ball around their defense when during Van Gaal's era they never allowed teams to breathe even in their own half.  Their goalkeeper and central defenders had far, far too many touches and allowed too much time on the wall.  Gomez was positioned as an attacking midfielder during the entire time that Bayern wasn't in hold of posession.  I am unsure why this was, you have to ask the coach.  The move itself is ridiculous as Bayern should at the end of the day be playing attacking football.  If not, then at least one of Ribery, Robben or Muller (if not two) need to get benched/sold for a better counter-attacking formation.  However they are all great players and it would be ridiculous to do such a thing, yet Heynckes was playing overly defensive even though BMG defended nearly the entire match.  The defense was actually solid for once, bar the silly mistake which both Neuer & Boateng were at fault for.  Schweinsteiger also should look at himself today, he was awful in that match and added nothing to the game.  He was basically playing defensive midfield (again Heynckes, why are there 2 defensive midfielders against a team like Borussia?), but not offering much defensively like Gustavo was.  Generally bar the defense (excluding their error), there was nothing positive in the match vs BMG.  They have a lot to prove, as they are already 3 points behind Dortmund who look just as good as last season! 

The only optimistic point here is that the last time Bayern lost at home to BMG, they won the Champions League in 2001!

New season starting.. will anything be different?

So after the 10/11 dreadful season where Bayern won nothing, management decided to finally spend this summer.  As per usual, they blamed the coach they fired for everything as they usually do and pretend they were blameless in just about everything.  It's obviously everyone else's fault but theirs.  Anyways for the upcoming season, they hired Heynckes early before the season even ended and I would imagine they talked to him about transfers as well.  And Bayern has spent roughly around 40m euros, with some clauses on Neuer's case potentially increasing by 7m depending on performances/trophies.  Bayern has already bought Neuer (18m), Rafinha (5.5m), Usami (loan), Petersen (2.8m), Boateng (13.5m) and sold Ekici for 5m euros which means Bayern have the net spend of 35m euros.  Based on the Vidal chase, we know for certain that they are or perhaps were willing to spend 10m euros at least.  Especially considering that we spent nothing on a record breaking revenue year last summer, one would hope we don't stop at 35m euros.. 

 Kahn's replacement is finally here

Now lets get to the players that we have already signed and see what they can offer.  The biggest one, the superstar Neuer is obviously going to improve the team drastically.  Very expensive for a keeper, but we got arguably the best keeper in the world or second best after Iker The Saint Casillas.  In terms of having a complete keeper, this is what you get.  World class distribution, something lacking severely, he is a very good passer on the ball.  He started many good counters for Schalke last season, once even when Schalke played Bayern to Raul which resulted in a goal.  He also is a good organizer of the defense, and is solid at corner when he collects the ball, also things we have missed in our defense.  I think you will find few Bayern fans (other than Ultras) that won't see him as the biggest positive contributor to our team of all the signings.  However Neuer alone can't make all the difference, and thankfully Bayern and Heynckes have addressed the defense heavily this summer.



The second most expensive signing is Boateng.  I won't talk about the City war or words drama, because it was boring but thankfully it made them lower their demands.  Signing a player that has hardly played CB as a pro to save us from our central defensive problems was a huge question mark, he has a lot of pressure to perform.  So far, I've only seen him play vs Barcelona B team but he looked very assured and composed.  One thing that I expected from him is to pass the ball from the back, he is known for his good passing but hopefully that comes with time.  Either way it's impossible to judge now, we need to see more of him but he impressed from the little I did watch. 

Usami, the future replacement of Robbery?

Another player that impressed during pre-season is Takashi Usami.  While he doesn't run as much as he should and gets tired pretty quickly, you can see his class.  He knows when to pass, doesn't get troubled when others pressure him and has great ideas even if some of them don't work in the end.  He still has a lot of adapting to do, but if he keeps improving and showing his class at this rate.. Bayern may have already found a replacement in a few years for either Ribery or Robben.  Very excited about this signing.  Petersen was bought for Gomez, as depth as they have similar styles.  Played great in Bundesliga II and still needs to adapt to Bayern's way of playing just like Usami, though I don't think he can do any worse than Miro Klose has for Bayern in the past 2 years.  Rafinha has looked pretty good so far as well, I'm very interested in seeing how he plays with Robben and how he can handle playing defensively with a player ahead of him who doesn't help much defensively.  Hard to judge the players since any of them bar Neuer are likely to turn out great, solid or flop signings.  At least Bayern addressed part of the defensive problems.  However, I would still like if they bought one more defender to partner Boateng, they still have the money to do so.  There is still exactly a month left in the transfer window, hopefully Bayern use it to buy one more class player.