BFW Bayern Munich player rankings: Mid-season standings + MVP

After every single game since the Supercup, we here at Bavarian Football Works ranked the four best players in a Bayern Munich shirt. These “match awards,” in increasing order of value, were the Tip of the Cap (1 point), Golf Clap (2 points), Standing Ovation (3 points) and the Meister of the match (4 points). Players who shared an award were deducted half a point from their total.

Now, at the halfway mark of the season, we’ve tallied the points of all the award recipients so far, and ranked them on a table. Here are the results:

Some takeaways:

• The awards are clearly somewhat biased in favor of forwards. David Alaba has been a model of consistency throughout the season and is probably one of the most important players in the campaign so far — but he still loses out to Joshua Zirkzee, who hasn’t even played 10 minutes for the first team yet. Serge Gnabry and Kingsley Coman have been very inconsistent, but they’re still in the top five.
• Robert Lewandowski is clearly the MVP of the team, with Thomas Müller a distant second. The points gap between them really reflects how important Lewandowski is to the team as a whole — he dominated the rankings last season as well.
• Thomas Müller earned a vast majority of his points following the appointment of Hansi Flick. Out of the total of 34.5, 19.5 points were earned in the ten games Flick has been in charge — almost 60% of points in 38% of available games. His prolonged stretch on the bench under Niko Kovac clearly hampered him, but since then he has been an outstanding performer.
• In terms of season-to-season performance, Thiago Alcantara suffered the biggest downgrade. Last season (under a slightly different scoring system), he was in third place, well behind Lewandowski but rather close to Muller in the standings. This year, he’s fallen well short of the top five, reflecting the drop in performance that we have seen from him. Hopefully, the Spaniard will pick up in the Rückrunde.
• Philippe Coutinho has done rather well for himself, sneaking in just outside the top 5. He had the most lopsided awards of any player, winning MotM 4 times, thereby getting almost 80% of his points in just four games. Hopefully, he spreads those good performances out a bit more in the second half of the season, especially against opponents in the top half of the table.
• Despite playing in defense (and out of position), Alphonso Davies has been a standout player in the Hinrunde and makes a strong impression on the rankings. What a start for someone so young!

Naturally, we’re not going to leave it at that, so stay tuned for our detailed player ratings. There’s a lot of stuff to talk about during the winter break, so be sure to check into Bavarian Football Works for the whole discussion.