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Just four days after Bayern Munich scraped by 4th division Rödinghausen, they’ll be back in action, but this time against a dangerous Freiburg team. With two big games next week against AEK Athens and Borussia Dortmund, will Kovac being looking to rotate and potentially sacrifice valuable points?
Team News
The big news is of course Thiago’s injury sustained in the DFB-Pokal match on Tuesday. However detrimental this may be, there is actual good news from Niko Kovac today. In his latest press conference, the trainer confirmed that the only unavailable players for Saturday’s game will be the aforementioned Thiago and the regulars Tolisso and Coman. That means that all of the players who couldn’t play against Rödinghausen are cleared. The highlights from this bunch include Mats Hummels, Arjen Robben, and James Rodriguez.
The main question for the match’s lineup is how Kovac will adapt to Thiago’s absence with a different midfield three. If you haven’t already read our BFW Roundtable about possible solutions, click here.
Starting with this game, we are approaching a crucial point in the season. If we want to catch Dortmund by the winter break, it’s time for Kovac to step up and take control of the team to lead us to where we expected him to. In order to do this, he needs to answer some questions. Will he finally decide to sit Robbery? Will he continue to favor Süle and Hummels as his center backs? Will he listen to Sandro Wagner’s discontent on the bench?
That said, here are our lineup predictions for the game:
Brian Burton
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Narrayan Sankar
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Gopika
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"We want to win our next two home matches - that is our clear aim!" #FCBSCF #FCBayern #MiaSanMia #packmas pic.twitter.com/iqH50ET8vF
— FC Bayern US (@FCBayernUS) November 2, 2018