Stefan Effenberg says Bayern Munich needs reinforcements to maintain its quality

Injuries have plagued Bayern Munich’s squad this season, which hasn’t made life any easier for interim manager Hansi Flick. Both Flick and sporting director Hasan Salihamidizc have entertained the idea of making some signings during the winter transfer window, but nothing has happened yet in that respect.

In an appearance on Sport1’s “Dopplepass” program, former Bayern player and current sporting director for KFC Uerdingen 05 Stefan Effenberg said that he feels Bayern definitely needs to bring in reinforcements this winter. During Bayern’s training camp in Qatar, Flick had mentioned Bayern was interested in bringing in a right-back to free Joshua Kimmich to play in the midfield and perhaps even in bringing in another attacking player. This is something Effenberg feels that Bayern absolutely need to do (SportBild):

It is a dire situation; otherwise Hansi Flick would not have said that. The absolutely need reinforcements. In a way, he is taking precautions in the event that the season does not go positively. What he said is an exclamation point.

While Effenberg sees the necessity of bringing in new players to help the team, he also acknowledges that it will be difficult to do during the January transfer window and that Bayern should focus more on the next summer window :

I doubt whether Bayern can do that in the winter. When you have ambitions like FC Bayern’s, the winter market doesn’t provide that. I think they will focus instead on the summer.

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Bayern perhaps should have done better during last summer’s transfer window in trying to replace big names like Mats Hummels, Franck Ribery, and Arjen Robben, in Effenberg’s opinion:

The situation is not simple for FC Bayern. You cannot forget that they lost high quality in the summer with Robben, Ribéry, and Hummels. They have not been able to compensate that; that’s a fact, and they are now feeling it a bit.

Joshua Kimmich also recently declared that he feels Bayern’s squad is too thin. Kimmich’s comments reiterated what Flick and Salihamidzic had said about potentially bringing in some reinforcements this winter. Effenberg says it’s clear that there’s a problem if more than one person is saying the squad is too thin:

If you say that you have too few players, then you also have too little quality. There are only 13 or 14 pros who are at 100 percent. It’s also about the quality of training, which has to be extremely high to reach you level or maintain it. There for you actually need a squad with 20 to 22 players at the top level.

With so many senior players out due to injury, Bayern’s training camp was comprised largely of youth players. They may have put their best foot forward during the week-long camp, but the lack of experience was evident in Bayern’s 5-2 friendly loss against FC Nürnberg, as the reserve players gave up 4 goals in the second half. With such a young, inexperienced group, Effenberg said, the quality of training will inevitably drop, and that is not good for Bayern’s squad overall:

When you practice plays, and there are many players from the second team there, then the level of training simply drops, and then those who actually are supposed to be challenged are not being challenged anymore. That is a big problem. Bayern’s ambition is always to win the championship, to win the DFB-Pokal, and to come as far as possible in the Champions League. You can’t do that with players from the [FC Bayern] Campus.

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