How Would Bayern Munich Cope Without Robert Lewandowski?

Robert Lewandowski plundered a league-high 30 goals as Bayern won a record fourth consecutive Bundesliga title under Pep Guardiola last term, and with a hat-trick in the Bavarians' opening-day 6-0 dismissal of Werder Bremen on Friday, the striker is off the mark in the new season already.

However, there remain lingering suspicions that the German champions would struggle to score so frequently if not for the prolific Pole, which was a sentiment that former Bayern defensive stalwart Thomas Berthold echoed recently.

"Carletto [new FCB coach Carlo Ancelotti] has one big problem—just one big striker," the 1990 FIFA World Cup winner told German news outlet Deutsche Welle. "They don't have top strikers on the bench to win the [UEFA] Champions League."

Lewandowski certainly qualifies as a "big striker" in terms of his goal return. The 28-year-old's haul against Bremen means that he has now scored 80 times in all competitions for Bayern since swapping Borussia Dortmund for the Allianz Arena in the summer of 2014—which equates to a goal every nine days, despite summer breaks, since his debut that August.

The Poland captain has won two league titles, as well as the DFB-Pokal and DFL-Supercup, in his 25 months with the Reds. Fifty strikes in the league alone mean that Lewandowski has been single-handedly responsible for 30 percent of Bayern's Bundesliga goals over the last two domestic campaigns, and he took only a record-breaking 64 games to reach the landmark.

Is Berthold correct, though?

On perusing Bayern's squad list for 2016-17, the conclusion that they are less well-stocked at centre-forward than in other areas seems unavoidable. Such has been the form of Lewandowski that Mario Mandzukic and Claudio Pizarro—both prolific goalscorers in their own right—have departed in consecutive seasons, for Atletico Madrid and Bremen, respectively.

The problem for Mandzukic, Pizarro, or anyone else looking to dethrone Lewandowski as the focal point of Bayern's attack, is that as well as being prolific, last season's top scorer is also relentlessly fit. Nicknamed "The Body" by his former Dortmund team-mates, according to Die Welt (in German), Lewandowski has never missed two consecutive games with injury for his current employers—not bad for a player released by Legia Warsaw in his youth for being too slight.

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Clearly Lewandowski is tough to replace, but to describe Bayern as incapable of adding a sixth European Cup/Champions League to their trophy cabinet in his absence is to do a disservice to the other players in the squad.

In Thomas Muller, FCB have a shrewd interpreter of space in the final third, and a player who enjoyed a hat-trick of assists from the right-hand side of a front three against Werder. This was a position the German World Cup winner occupied for much of last season, during which time he snatched 20 league goals—third behind only Lewandowski and Dortmund's Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang.

On the flanks, Bayern are perhaps the best-stocked team in world football, with Franck Ribery, Arjen Robben, Douglas Costa and Kingsley Coman the wingers in their stable. "Robbery", as the former two are collectively nicknamed, combined for 22 goals and 14 assists in the Bundesliga when they were in full flight two seasons ago.

With the pair struggling with injury last term, Costa was brought in from Shakhtar Donetsk and Coman from Juventus. Fans worrying about the absence of Ribery and Robben were quickly relieved by the presence of "CoCo", with the pair mustering eight goals and 15 assists between them.

Ribery appears to be back to full fitness—as 90 minutes, a goal and an assist against Bremen would attest—and although Robben and Costa are unavailable, the Dutchman's hamstring strain and the Brazilian's thigh injury are unlikely to disrupt their seasons for too long.

Any two from Ribery, Robben, Costa and Coman playing either side of Muller would guarantee goals, and it is not as if Muller's nose would be put out of joint by being forced to shift to a more central position, with the player just as content to take chances as he is to make them.

"Every good, successful player, especially an attacking player, has a well-developed sense of space and time," he told Eight by Eight (h/t the Guardian). "It's not a phenomenon you only find in two or three people on earth. Every great striker knows it's all about the timing between the person who plays the pass and the person making a run into the right zone."

The top scorer with five goals as Germany finished third at the 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa, Muller added another five as his country ended an 18-year wait for an international title in Brazil two years ago. Only former Bayern strikers Miroslav Klose and Jurgen Klinsmann have a better goals-to-minutes-played ratio than the 26-year-old product of Bayern's Sabener Strasse youth academy.

Even if Ancelotti wanted to keep his formation as it is, with Ribery and Muller spending their time as close to the touchline as they do the opposition box, the Italian coach would have one final ace in his pack: Julian Green.

The former Germany youth international, now capped six times for Klinsmann's adopted USA, has had a stuttering introduction to Bayern's first-team, with a spell in the reserves playing right-back and a less-than-fruitful season on loan at Hamburg in 2014-15. However, Green only turned 21 in June, and it seems that the new Bayern coach has faith in the winger-cum-striker.

Indeed, Green led the line in all six games in pre-season, which included fixtures against such luminaries of world football as Manchester City, AC Milan, Internazionale and Real Madrid. A return of four goals in that time repaid Ancelotti's faith.

A particular positive for Bayern was Green's hat-trick against Inter at the Bank of America Stadium in North Carolina last month. Blessed with blistering pace, the forward combined beautifully with Ribery and sealed a three-goal salvo inside 35 minutes to help secure a 4-1 win against the 18-time Italian champions.

"He played well, really well," said Ancelotti. "He scored three goals, and it was a very good performance. Julian was ready to finish… he will be important for us in the season."

Berthold won club trophies in Germany and Italy—as well as the game's top prize with Germany in Italy in 1990—and his opinion is rightly respected. However, the depth and adaptability of Bayern's squad and the nascent talent of Green mean that this time Berthold is—like Lewandowski—off the mark, but in a profoundly different way.