Striker Depth Is Bayern Munich's Biggest Area of Concern Ahead of 2016/17 Season

For the last two years, Bayern Munich have been blessed with one of the world's finest strikers: Robert Lewandowski. Since joining the German giants from Borussia Dortmund in the summer of 2014, the Poland international has come up aces again and again.

Lewandowski took a little time to find his feet, but he was at his best early in the second half of his first season at the Allianz Arena.

Last season was perhaps his best overall as a professional footballer: He scored 42 goals in all competitions, including a whopping 30 in the Bundesliga and nine in the Champions League. The former was enough to see him crowned top scorer of the German league at season's end.

Of all the strikers in world football right now, only Luis Suarez can truly compare to Lewandowski.

For any club, replacing Lewandowski would be extremely difficult. He is, after all, a world-class player of unique qualities. Yet for Bayern, the hypothetical task would be even more challenging than for most. There just isn't much behind him in terms of depth.

Previously, Bayern had an aging but still reliable Claudio Pizarro to back up Lewandowski. And before the Polish striker moved to Munich, Bayern had both Mario Mandzukic and Mario Gomez as options for the role of striker.

But last season, Bayern had no backup for Lewandowski. And it appears they will enter the 2016-17 campaign without a backup striker, with Carlo Ancelotti having pledged not to sign another attacking player this summer after the sale of Mario Gotze to Dortmund and an injury to Arjen Robben, per ESPN's Raphael Honigstein.

TASOS KATOPODIS/Getty Images

As it stands, Bayern's depth at striker is limited to Julian Green and Thomas Muller behind Lewandowski. The latter has always been a reliable scorer overall in his career, but his strengths are not as a lone center forward. He lacks a little bit of muscle that players like Lewandowski and Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang have and does not make up for this deficiency with exceptional technical quality like some smaller strikers do.

Muller's best and most unique quality is his ability to find space and position himself where he can make an impact. A certain amount of this comes down to his ability to slip away when defenders aren't watching, which requires distractions—and they are hard to come by when the player trying to sneak around in the shadows is positioned as the main, lone striker.

There have been times in Muller's career when he's succeeded as a lone striker, but it's not his best position, and he clearly is not particularly comfortable with it.

In the absence of the injured Mario Gomez at Euro 2016, Muller seemed to reject his deployment as a striker. As he put it, he "roved about too much," as noted by Suddeutsche Zeitung (via ESPN's Stephan Uersfeld).

"[I should have accepted] I was deployed as a central attacker and might be without a touch of the ball for 20 minutes. I didn't do that," Muller continued.

Along with Muller, the other option is Green. The United States international has made an impression on Ancelotti in recent weeks, with the trainer saying that "[Green] will be important for [Bayern] in the season," as reported by FourFourTwo's Paul Tenorio. He netted a hat-trick in a recent friendly against Inter, which is certainly encouraging.

Yet Green has spent his entire career to date as a winger. He stands just 5'8" and made just one appearance for the Bayern senior team last season. In the season before, he made just five league appearances for the Hamburg first team while on loan, amassing only 109 minutes played, per Transfermarkt.

There is plenty of untapped potential in Green, of that there can be no doubt. But as a striker? And at a team with Bayern's pressure and expectations? Perhaps it's too much of a stretch to expect him to fill in for Lewandowski, even despite his good recent performances. Form is fleeting, and a friendly or two is very different from competitive play.

Alexander Hassenstein/Getty Images

Like Dortmund before them, Bayern have been fortunate enough to benefit from a consistently healthy Lewandowski. On the other hand, records are made to be broken, and at some point, it's likely the ex-Lech Poznan man and serial goal-getter will be unavailable for a few games. In those situations, Bayern will need to have a backup.

It's worth noting that Lewandowski struggled towards the end of the 2015-16 campaign and looked exhausted at the European Championship. He's hardly had a break since emerging as Dortmund's first-choice striker in the fall of 2011. Perhaps having occasional rotation might be the right way to handle him, even if he doesn't fall injured.

Rather than sign another striker to serve as backup, Bayern have opted to roll the dice. Dortmund were fortunate enough to never be punished for lacking suitable backup for their talismanic striker, and Bayern haven't yet, so perhaps it's a worthwhile risk. He is, after all, a phenomenal and durable athlete.

But the risk is there, and it's in the striker position that Bayern will most be concerned heading into the 2016-17 campaign.

@Mr_Bundesliga