Musiala Rescues Mistake Laden Bayern | OneFootball

Following their unfortunate exit in the Pokal to the hands of Leverkusen, Bayern returned to Bundesliga play against 1. FC Heidenheim.

Vincent Kompany made several changes to the lineup that he sent out midweek with Daniel Peretz, Sacha Boey, Dayot Upamecano, Kim Min Jae, Alphonso Davies, Joshua Kimmich, Aleksander Pavlovic, Leroy Sané, Raphaël Guerreiro, Michael Olise and Thomas Müller.

Several notable additions with Pavlovic making his return, no Jamal Musiala and Peretz in for an injured Manuel Neuer. Given their opposition, it probably made sense for Kompany to rotate in this match but some of the decisions were interesting.

Three Things We Noticed

Control

Bayern dominated this match in a way that we’ve rarely seen even under the likes of Guardiola. 82.5% possession is insane. The first half especially, Heidenheim didn’t even sniff the ball.

Bayern took the lead through a corner kick as Kimmich’s ball found Upamecano who lost his man thanks to a Müller pick and he smashed it home.

However Bayern struggled to do much else with that possession. Heidenheim really packed the center of the pitch and the box forcing Bayern wide. The wings really struggled to find any options in the middle or to break down their defenders.

Still Bayern managed a few chances with one/twos and balls over the top that should have resulted in at least one other goal in the first half. The second half however saw that despite their control, it only takes a few errors to change the game.

Defensive Mistakes

The first of those came, as they unfortunately often have, at the foot of Upamecano. Only he knows what he was thinking with the pass he made back to Peretz, but it was poorly hit and resulted in an easy goal for Heidenheim on their first shot of the match.

Then After Bayern had taken a 3-1 lead through Goretzka, Davies got muscled off the ball which coupled with poor positioning from Upa again resulted in another easy goal for Heidenheim on their second shot of the match.

To be clear, Heidenheim did next to nothing but defend for the rest of this match, but those two mistakes resulted in two goals. This is something we have seen very often in recent season but that they had seemingly made strides to eliminating recently.

This is yet another reminder that Kompany has a lot of work to do in regards to getting this defense and the players up to scratch. They are too often prone to careless mistakes that can cause them massive issues as this season progresses.

Musiala To The Rescue

Luckily, Bayern still have Musiala and as soon as he was inserted in this match it made all the difference. After allowing the equalizer, Musiala made one of his trademark runs into the box and finished easily to give them the lead again.

Then as Heidenheim was given late life with the second goal, Musiala made another run down the field and scored the goal that finally finished off the match 4-2.

Musiala has been in incredible form this season and while I agree with Kompany that this might have been a match to let him get some rest, Bayern showed that without both him and Kane, they do not really have the players to break down a deep lying team consistently.

Perhaps Leon Goretzka who was eventually introduced and scored, might have been a more interesting option in the attacking midfield role. Guerriero actually had a pretty good match but with Heidenheim so deep, they really needed someone like Goretzka to make runs into the box.

However, Musiala once again made the difference as he so often has this season. With the increased consistency in his play, he is almost unquestionably the most important player for the team offensively. At this point, Bayern can’t lock him up for the future soon enough.