Following the winter break, Bayern Munich resumed Bundesliga action on Saturday evening, traveling to Borussia Park to face Borussia Monchengladbach.
Despite missing several key players, including Jamal Musiala through injury and Dayot Upamecano due to suspension for accumulated yellow cards, Bayern arrived at Borussia Park in good spirits having demolished Austrian side RB Salzburg 6-0 in a friendly encounter just five days earlier.
However, against Monchengladbach Die Roten had to settle for victory by the slenderest of margins despite being statistically dominant over the course of the match. Let us now take a look at some key takeaways from Bayern’s slender 1-0 win at Borussia-Park and why the final score didn’t reflect the team’s overall dominance.
Poor-finishing despite dominating opponent
From 67% ball possession Bayern managed 23 attempts at the opposition’s goal with 10 of those being on target, whilst the hosts failed to register a single shot on target throughout the game. Monchengladbach’s goalkeeper-Moritz Nicolas with 9 saves would have been the neutrals’ man-of-the-match, but whilst some of his saves were brilliant a few were just down to poor finishing from the visitors.
Thomas Muller, Leroy Sané and substitute Serge Gnabry all missed at least one gilt-edged scoring opportunity. Harry Kane’s penalty conversion midway through the second half for the game’s only goal brought a huge sigh of relief as poor finishing was the theme on Saturday.
So far this season, the Rekordmeister has had a few performances like this one where the killer instinct in front of goal was lacking, but on Saturday it was completely absent. Simply put, if the Bundesliga title is to return to Munich in June, then that sort of profligacy in the final third has to stop, starting with the next match on Wednesday when Hoffenheim visits the Allianz Arena.