Have tireless Augsburg found the blueprint to beating Bayern Munich?
Runaway Bundesliga leaders Bayern Munich have been sending records tumbling on a near-weekly basis this season, but have Augsburg found the blueprint to defeating Vincent Kompany’s side?
Despite suffering their first league defeat of the season at the Allianz Arena on Saturday, Bayern have more points at this stage of a top-flight campaign than any other team since 2015/16, when Pep Guardiola was at the helm in Munich.
They have found the net an astonishing 72 times – 11 more than the previous record after Matchday 19 – while no team has conceded fewer than the Bavarians’ 16 goals this term.
Watch: Bayern 1-2 Augsburg - highlights
Despite averaging the most possession (62 percent) in the league, Kompany’s charges have also covered more ground than any other side in Germany’s top division, averaging 123.9 kilometres per game – over 2.5 km more than the next hardest-working outfit, 10th-placed Cologne.
The only team to outrun them in a game this season? You guessed it - Augsburg.
Manuel Baum’s team clocked up 124.3 km in Munich on Saturday afternoon, with Bayern ‘only’ covering 122.9 km. It was not as if the hosts hadn’t been warned either.
Trailing 3-0 at home to Bayern back in August, Augsburg outran their opponents – albeit marginally (66.7 km compared to 66.2 km) – after half-time and managed to reduce the deficit through Kristijan Jakić and Mert Kömür, but they were unable to salvage a draw on that occasion.
Watch: Bayern survive Augsburg scare on Matchday 2
It was a very different story on Saturday, as second-half efforts from January signing Arthur Chaves and Han-Noah Massengo helped Die Fuggerstädter claim all three points from a losing position for the first time this term.
The win was by no means undeserved, with Augsburg registering just as many efforts at goal (15) as their opponents, including 12 in the second half.
What makes Augsburg’s triumph particularly remarkable, though, is that Bayern tend to turn on the style themselves after the restart.
If Bayern hadn’t scored a single first-half goal this season, they would still boast the Bundesliga’s best attack, having found the net more often in the second half (42 times) than the division’s second-highest-scoring side (Eintracht Frankfurt, 39) have overall.
Twenty-four of those goals have come in the final 15 minutes – over twice as many as any other team in that period. Before Tuesday’s rearranged Matchday 16 fixtures, eight Bundesliga clubs had scored fewer goals overall than Bayern have in the final quarter of an hour.
Kompany’s team have also registered over 23 percent more attempts at goal after half-time, while there is a marked increase in both their xG rate (33 percent) and big-chance creation (30 percent) in the second half of games.
Six of their eight counter-attacking goals have also come after the break, underlining Augsburg’s considerable efforts off the ball at the Allianz Arena on Saturday.
Their first away win over Bayern in nearly 11 years was no fluke. Baum and his tireless players have shown that if you match the Bavarians’ work rate, the rest – including three precious points – may well follow.
Easier said than done, of course.
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