Have Bayern Munich Successfully Plugged Gap Left by Philipp Lahm Injury?

Bayern Munich may look rather comfortable in each competition so far this season, but their defeat to Manchester City in the Champions League last week offered some food for thought to the suggestion that this team was far from indestructible. 

Yet rather than some naive tactical overlook from coach Pep Guardiola, the misfiring form of Robert Lewandowski or a howler from Brazilian defender Dante, Bayern suffered because of a much bigger problem: their inability to properly replace their injured captain Philipp Lahm.

The natural inclination from the Spanish coach was to simply recruit his backup central midfielders in Pierre-Emile Hojbjerg and Sebastian Rode. Two excellent, young talents with high hopes of one day leading Bayern's midfield like Lahm and others. 

However, both certainly showed their age against the Premier League side as Frank Lampard, Fernando and company managed to turn the game in their favour and ultimately walk away from a game they should have had little chance in with all three points. 

The problem that Guardiola has quickly come to realise is that Lahm is one of a very small number of players within the sport right now who simply can't be replaced. That may sound rather odd to say, but let's explore it for a moment. 

When we look at the former German international, he doesn't exactly tick many boxes. He's small, not particularly fast and rarely showed any fine amount of skill or technique—and yet he's irreplaceable. Such is the level of his intelligence on the ball (and off it) that Lahm simply knows where to be at every point in the game.

Ivan Sekretarev/Associated Press

He's not a great tackler, he's just great at timing his tackles. He's not a great passer, he just knows who to pass to. And he's not an exceptional athlete, he just knows where to be at any given point in a move or while defending. 

This is perfectly illustrated in the current German national team, which has seen coach Joachim Low continue to tinker with the full-back position formerly ruled by Lahm for the past 10 years. Many players of all shapes and sizes have tried, but none have managed to click into place quite like the Bayern captain. 

Guardiola clearly accepted such a situation much quicker than Low when he decided to give up on Hojbjerg and Rode and, instead, play attacking players in their stead alongside Xabi Alonso. As they say, attack is the best form of defense—and Guardiola certainly has plenty of attacking options to chose from. 

This tactic, deployed against Hertha Berlin in last weekend's Bundesliga clash, certainly worked to an extent. Bayern held on to the vast majority of the ball, passing it around from one flank to the other like a sporting, somewhat tiresome metronome, but they only finished the game with a solitary goal to accompany their three points. 

Hertha certainly weren't up to the task of beating the Munich side—no matter which setup Guardiola chose—but such an attacking lineup in the centre of the park certainly wouldn't work against better sides in Germany and across Europe.

One man who could possibly replace the former German captain is fellow full-back-turned-midfielder David Alaba, who has quickly developed into one of the club's most important players this season (due to Guardiola's constant redevelopment of the player).

The Austrian prodigy not only shares the decision making and defensive positioning of Lahm from playing left-back alongside him for a number of years, but he also possesses a similar ability to pick up the ball and exploit space from the middle of the pitch. 

Matthias Schrader/Associated Press

One of the main reasons Guardiola was so adamant about repositioning Lahm as a midfielder was because he so regularly found himself in that space when playing right-back. Most full-backs may tend to hug the touchline and cross in early balls, but Lahm would often cut inside and link up with long-standing colleague Bastian Schweinsteiger. 

Such a ploy has now become just as evident in Alaba's game, to the point where the 22-year-old now occupies midfield alongside Lahm. He plays an almost identical role on the other side of Alonso—or, indeed, Schweinsteiger when he returns to regular play. 

However, unfortunately for Guardiola, Alaba is also out injured for the foreseeable future. It would seem that for the time being Bayern and Guardiola simply can't plug the gap left by Lahm.