Bayern Munich Already Halfway to Bundesliga Title After Recent Form

It may be an audacious title to lead with, but at this point, it seems a near certainty that Bayern Munich are going to run away with the Bundesliga title once again.

Of course, this is football, and anything can happen—but off the back of Bayern’s more than impressive 3-0 away victory against a shoddy-looking (albeit injury-struck) Borussia Dortmund side, you would have to imagine that the current German champions probably already have one hand on the trophy.

Usually, when I hear people talking in this fashion about the conclusion of a season this early on I scoff at their ridiculous jumping of the gun. We are, after all, just 13 games into a 34-match marathon.

At this point, it is more than mathematically possible that Bayern could somehow manage to end up as much as 30 points behind BVB or Leverkusen. It is also possible that the earth could be swallowed by a black hole tomorrow—but neither are going to happen.

Currently, the Bavarian giants sit seven points clear of Dortmund in third place and four points ahead of Leverkusen in the second-place spot.

While these are in no way insurmountable leads over their closest rivals, one has to take note of the relative ease with which Bayern have romped ahead of their opposition.

At times this season, the treble-winners have looked far from their best—often finding themselves relying on a moment of magic from an individual to get them out of hot water, as opposed to working fluently as a whole unit throughout.

Despite these occasionally poor showings (which are the only hope that BVB and Leverkusen have of finishing ahead of Bayern this year), Pep Guardiola’s men have amazingly managed to win all but two of the 20 games they have played in all competitions thus far this campaign.

Those numbers are staggering—and when you consider that Bayern haven’t even properly shifted into top gear yet, they become even scarier.

This current Bayern side may well be the best team that the Bundesliga has ever seen, as controversial as that statement may sound. When your “weakest” (and I use the term loosely) first-team player is a Brazilian national team regular, you know that things are going your way.  

A team of this magnitude simply won’t drop enough points this year for either of their rivals to catch up. They are bred to win games of football, however well or poorly they play.

The 3-0 away win last weekend emphasised Bayern’s dominance over BVB right now, and Wednesday night’s humiliating 5-0 defeat at home to an off-par Manchester United side was probably a huge reality check for any Leverkusen supporters thinking they might mount a challenge for their first-ever league crown.

Even injuries don’t seem to be able to halt the charge that the Bavarians have been on for the better part of a year and a half.

Bastian Schweinsteiger was (and still is) considered an integral part of the Bayern setup. His presence was felt to be one of the driving forces that aided them on their sprint to last year’s historic treble.

While it is still 100 percent true that Schweinsteiger’s influence on games is (almost) always a positive one, this year, Munich have shown that even without one of their talisman players, they are able to churn out phenomenal results week after week.

The problem for the champion’s rivals is that when one world-class player picks up a knock, another is waiting in the wings to step up and take his place.

With a seemingly an unrelenting pool of talent to call upon, the biggest “issue” that Guardiola has on a weekly basis is whether or not to play Mario Goetze or Toni Kroos in the starting XI.

No, there is little—if any, at all—evidence to suggest that any side is capable of domestically beating the Bundesliga title-holders to this year’s summit, even at these perilously early stages.

That’s not a criticism of the German league or a lack of talent within. More, this is a testament to Bayern’s unrelenting brilliance and match-winning prowess.

Five back-to-back wins (including a victory at the Etihad stadium—where Manchester City have routed teams 7-0, 6-0, 4-0 and 4-1 this season in the league) so far in their Champions League campaign also hints at the tournament’s first-ever retention of the championship in its most contemporary format.

Although, the Champions League is a whole different kettle of fish, and backing anyone in that competition before even the group stages have ended would be farcical.

While teams like Freiburg have shown that Bayern are not perfect, one has to excuse even the greatest sides of the occasional faux pas every now and again.

Aside from this one result, Bayern seem like the same dominant force they were last year and that, as we all witnessed in the 2012-13 campaign, spells doom for the rest of Germany.

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