Mainz Take Down Bayern | OneFootball

Following Bayern’s 5-1 thrashing of Shakhtar Tuesday, Bayern returned to Bundesliga play to take on Mainz at the MEWA Arena.

Vincent Kompany made several changes to the side he put out on Tuesday with Daniel Peretz, Konrad Laimer, Eric Dier, Kim MinJae, Raphaël Guerreiro, Joshua Kimmich, Aleksander Pavlovic, Michael Olise, Jamal Musiala, Leroy Sané and Thomas Müller filling out the starting eleven.

Three Things We Noticed

Disconnected

For a variety of reasons, Kompany was forced into an even more disjointed starting eleven than usual today and in this instance they paid the price.

Mainz came out and played a very high energy press that caused Bayern tons of problems all match long. It became increasingly obvious that the players were not on the same page at all throughout the match.

The passing was all over the place. The players were not moving together. They could not break the press with any consistency. Honestly, they were a mess. They looked like a team that hadn’t played together and if we’re being honest, this particular group really has not.

Luckily there is only one more match left before the winter break when hopefully Bayern can get healthy again for the business half of the season.

Game Plan

As mentioned previously, Mainz’s game plan played a massive role in the outcome of this match as well. Bayern clearly were not expecting Mainz to come out so aggressively.

The changes in Bayern’s eleven, really played perfectly into Mainz’s hands and allowed them to disrupt every aspect of their game. It was noticeable how much time was being spent in the Bayern half of the pitch and when Mainz scored the opener, it was certainly well deserved.

While it was a high risk high reward gamble on the part of Bo Henriksen, the tactics he employed certainly paid off. If Mainz had come out looking to sit deep and counter, most likely the result would have been different, so he deserves tons of credit and the players executed it perfectly.

Keeping Calm

As bad a day as it was for Bayern, I certainly don’t think it’s time for anyone to be hitting the panic button. The number of injuries that Bayern are currently dealing with forced them into a less than ideal lineup and while we should still expect more, these games tend to happen to every team every year.

What’s important is that they bounce back and put in a good performance against Leipzig on Friday. Hopefully a few of the regulars will be back by then and they can go into the winter break on a high note.

If those players are not yet available, Kompany needs to focus on getting the players he has available more connected over the coming week.

Dier and Kim especially had a lot of problems playing next to each other both in terms of positioning and passing. Additionally both Laimer and Guerreiro looked relatively poor in the full back positions which left the entire defense relatively weak.

The problems at the back extended throughout the pitch as the attack never really got involved and Kimmich and Pavlovic had a hard time bridging the two sides.

A lot of this is probably very fixable, especially if they get Upamecano back quickly. While I certainly would not pin everything today on Dier, there was clearly a lot of problems caused by the change in central defenders.