Julian Nagelsmann has added increased control to the Bundesliga champions so hope of a title race looks over before Christmas
This should have been the ideal fixture to take us into the Winterpause. A soupçon of a possible fight for the title, an indication that Bayern Munich would have work to do in the second half of the season, a sense of leaving the public begging for more in the last match of the calendar year – along the line of tradition like last year’s late, late Robert Lewandowski goal digging out a win at Bayer Leverkusen, or the two goals in the last four minutes that were needed to put away Wolfsburg, Friday night’s visitors, two years ago in this same fixture seeing us into
Christmas 2019.
By the end of the match, however, all Die Wölfe were begging for was mercy. There was never any cliffhanger potential here and if you were looking for statistical hope, you were doing so in the wrong place. Never before has a team with 43 points or more at Christmas failed to go on and win the Bundesliga, and that’s where Bayern are.