Dream of Home Final Ends As Bayern Lose to Inter | OneFootball

After a home defeat last week against Inter Milan and a disappointing draw against BVB at the Allianz, Bayern had a lot of work to do in order to advance in this year’s Champions League.

Vincent Kompany sent out the exact same lineup he did against Dortmund at the weekend. In some fairness his choices were limited but there were maybe a few raised eyebrows given an in form Serge Gnabry and Goretzka’s continued presence despite the defensive frailty of this team.

The match itself played out fairly predictably and in some ways as well as most Bayern supporters could probably realistically expect. Bayern took the lead through Kane shortly after half time but Inter responded with two goals in three minutes to knock Bayern back down to reality.

Bayern however did respond as Dier tied the match in the 76th minute and pushed the Italians to the end with a few chances to force extra time. Unfortunately it was not to be and they bowed out 4-3 on aggregate.

Three Things We Noticed

Doomed

Lets get this out of the way. Bayern were largely doomed in this tie before it even began. Yes, everyone deals with injuries and absences at this time of year. But when you are missing arguably your most important offensive player, your starting goalkeeper, central defender and your first two options at left back, you have very little chance of beating a team as talented as Inter.

While Bayern fans hoped for a miracle, this was always the most likely result. In all honesty, Bayern even had a chance to go through if they could have capitalized on some of their chances. But that’s the line they had to walk. They couldn’t waste anything. They had to play nearly perfect football and they didn’t.

While I don’t like to make excuses for the team, it’s hard not to in this circumstance and it would be entirely unfair to the players and coaches to not mention it. Bayern had hoped to create a storybook return to the Champions League final at home this season, but they’ll be forced to watch it from the sidelines like the rest of us.

Shifting Focus

As disappointed as they will all be, the players and coaches will have to quickly move on as they now have to finish off their Bundesliga campaign. They squandered a golden opportunity to put some distance between themselves and Leverkusen last weekend and remain just six points clear of last seasons champions.

They will head on the road to Heidenheim this coming weekend in a match they must win as things certainly won’t get any easier going forward.

Kompany needs to figure out how to get the most out of the players he has available. While I know Goretzka had a good run of form, scoring goals especially, with the abundance of injuries at the back he really needs to find another solution next to Kimmich.

Palhinha is obvious solution as he can offer far more defensive support to the central defenders and allow Kimmich and the fullbacks a little more license to get forward. However even adding in Pavlovic would be an improvement as his ball playing ability and work in the build up play would benefit this team.

Goals

While it’s hardly surprising that the defense has had their struggles, it’s far more noteworthy how difficult the offense has found it to find goals.

Musiala’s absence is obviously a huge one as his creativity opens up so much from the middle of the pitch. However, there is far too much talent for this team to be laboring this much to find the back of the net.

The difficulty creating chances is probably more understandable but nearly every player has missed a few sitters in the box. That is what is hard to swallow as a supporter.

Kane, Sané, Olise, Müller and Guerriero have all missed very good opportunities to put Bayern on the scoresheet in recent weeks and Bayern have paid the price for those chances too often.

While we can’t expect them to never miss good chances, they need to start converting at a higher clip than they currently are if they are going to win the league.

Leverkusen don’t have the easiest matches to end their season but Bayern have to assume they will take 15 points from those remaining five matches. So while they don’t have to be perfect, they also really don’t want to allow Leverkusen to get back into it even further by dropping points.

That starts this weekend. A win over Heidenheim should put them in pretty good position, only really needing two more wins given the goal differential. Any dropped points however could be catastrophic to their title hopes.