Augsburg vs Bayern Munich: Lineups, team news, moving on from David Alaba, and more! (Updated)

It’s the middle of January, but the crazy schedule we have this season means it’s another Bundesliga English week! Bayern Munich travel to Bavarian neighbors Augsburg hoping to keep up the momentum, following last weekend’s win over SC Freiburg. The team knows that their rivals mostly face each other this matchday, so a win could help extend a valuable lead in the points table.

Team news

The headline news is that Hansi Flick admits that David Alaba will probably leave the club. What this means for the lineup will be discussed later, but keep that one in mind. Meanwhile, in terms of injuries, Tanguy Nianzou has returned to training with the ball, while the injury Serge Gnabry sustained on Sunday wasn’t serious and he should be available to start tomorrow.

So how will Bayern Munich line up? Well, you can expect Robert Lewandowski and Thomas Muller to lead the line like they usually do — a standard Bundesliga game isn’t the time to rest your most important players. Joining them will likely be Leroy Sane and Kingsley Coman on the flanks, assuming Flick wants to give Gnabry the most time possible to recover. Jamal Musiala is another option, if Flick wants to give the youngster a chance against the 11th placed team in the table.

In midfield, Joshua Kimmich looked extremely tired against Freiburg, and made errant passes that put his team under pressure. He was subbed off early as a result. This would be a good time to give Marc Roca some minutes and allow Kimmich to rest, but Hansi has seemed reluctant to trust the Spaniard with any game time in the league this season. So, a dual pivot of Corentin Tolisso and Leon Goretzka seems very likely, but Javi Martinez might have an outside chance of starting at DM instead.

For the defense — Bayern fans won’t like hearing this, but Hansi Flick emphasized stability in his press conference. He said that since the defense did well on Sunday, he wanted to see more consistency. This probably means that fans won’t get to see Lucas Hernandez or Niklas Sule start together, likely in favor of an unchanged backline of Alphonso Davies, David Alaba, Jerome Boateng, and Benjamin Pavard. “But what about rotation?”, I hear you cry. Well, Bayern face Schalke this weekend, so you may see rotation against them.

So where does that leave us? Well, here’s how Bayern might line up tomorrow:

Other options:

• Kimmich might play instead of Tolisso.
• Musiala instead of Sane or Coman on the wing.
• Niklas Sule instead of Jerome Boateng at CB.
• Lucas Hernandez instead of Alphonso Davies at LB.
• Serge Gnabry instead of Sane on the wing.
• Marc Roca on the 3rd bench seat instead of the 4th.
• Alex Nubel wears a funny hat to the game.

Update

Just to be thorough, here’s how Bild thinks we might line up.