So, as regular followers of this blog will know, I’ve been promising big changes for a while now.  Well, today’s the big day.  If you dislike the new comment system or the outdated interface of this website, I have good news.  And if you are resistant to any kind of change whatsoever, I have bad news.  But, in either event, the news is the same: effective immediately, this blog has been upgraded and moved by its owner company, SB Nation.  From now on, you can read me over at Bavarian Football Works, SB Nation’s new all-Bayern Munich, all-the-time blog.

All of our old stories, discussions, and threads are there, including everyone’s comments (even the ones that seemingly got eaten on this site).  The routine of previews, match day threads, etc. will remain the same.  This new site will just allow you guys a greater chance for interaction, along with better photo and media options and a generally better technical system. Some of the spam comments might have made the move from the old site to the new, but none will ever appear on the new site (you’ll see what I mean – technologically, SB Nation sites are light years ahead of Offside sites).

The change might prove an annoyance in the short-term, but I’m confident that everyone who follows us over to the new site will eventually be very satisfied with it.  If you have trouble finding anything or getting started, feel free to e-mail me at bayern.offside@yahoo.com and I’ll see what I can do.  As always, thanks for reading.

At this point, Hertha is clearly one of the Bundesliga’s bottom-feeders, but we looked like a club that wouldn’t have been stopped by anyone today. Everyone up front was on point, but Robben was especially dangerous. Every time he touched the ball, it looked like he was a threat to unleash a good shot, and his first goal was one of the best I’ve seen from him in a while. In the midfield, Gustavo looked a lot more energetic than he did in the midweek win over Basel, and both of our FBs got forward to help win balls and set up attacks.

It’s hard to find negatives in a 6-0 win … but there were a few momentary breakdowns in the back line. Alaba let his man wriggle by him once or twice. Badstuber slipped and gave away a chance (though I think the pitch might have been in less-than-perfect condition), and Boateng got beat to a ball in the air and gave up a header at one point. Still, the defense was generally solid, and Neuer avoided any mistakes and had one really nice save to keep the clean sheet.

Some videos – first, the comic relief:

Whoever uploaded that clearly got the name wrong – it was Kroos and Ribery deciding who got the shot. Still a nice clip, though.

This first goal:

Not sure if that was a mis-hit, or if he really intended to get it off the inside of his foot like that?

And this one should have all the goals:

Back with more later. A big win, but this week we’re going to play a club that’s beaten us twice this year, and that’s better than any of the last 3 we’ve faced, so let’s not get carried away.

Gomez

Ribery – Mueller – Robben

Kroos – Gustavo

Alaba – Badstuber – Boateng – Lahm

Neuer

Hertha Berlin:

Ramos

Rukavytsya – Raffael – Perdedaj

Niemeyer – Ottl

Bastians – Hubnik – Janker – Lell

Kraft

The match will kick off in 30 minutes.  Our match day Chat Box:

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I try not to censor the Chat Box, which I understand is where we share immediate and emotional reactions, but please at least be nice to each other.  We are less than 48 hours from rolling out the new platform – so for those who don’t think the new comment system (which is pretty much all of us), we will be rid of it by this week’s huge Pokal match.

Viva viva FC Bayern!

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And your bracket is complete:

APOEL
________
Real Madrid
________

Marseilles
________
FC Bayern
________

Benfica
________
Chelsea
________

AC Milan
________
Barcelona
________

First leg starts at the end of March (not this upcoming week, but the week after that). So we have midweek play on tap for most of the foreseeable future.

Thanks to those that got up early / stayed up late to watch with me. Hertha match tomorrow, then I have a big surprise for everyone coming by Monday … maybe earlier. Thanks for reading.

The Line-Up

Although we went into the last match with 3 guys nursing possible injuries, all 3 ended up able to play, and all performed well.  Rafinha, still getting over the effects of the flu, is doubtful (aside from the fact that he may have lost his spot, now that Alaba and Lahm have demonstrated themselves to be an effective FB pairing).

Bastian Schweinsteiger, coming off his long ankle injury rehab, has come off the bench the last two matches.  It would seem he’s finally ready to return to the starting XI.  So, either Kroos could start on the bench, or Bastian and Toni could play next to each other, with Gustavo (who was dragging a bit at the end of the first half on Tuesday) might take a rest.

My highly uneducated guess:

I think Kroos and Gustavo will both get a rest – nothing against them, just squad rotation.  It’s also possible that Kroos could start up front, but Müller is finally starting to find his form, so I doubt Jupp Heynckes will want to mess with him now.

One of the drawbacks of doing the preview on Thursday is that the club’s official site hasn’t yet put up its little interview with Jupp Heynckes, where he at least gives some hint as to what might be on tap.  So if you have any insider info on who might be hurt or who might be returning, feel free to e-mail us at bayern.offside@yahoo.com, or leave it in the comments.

Along those same lines: the comment system sucks, I know.  It appears I’m not paying attention, I know.  But in fact, the new platform is coming together rapidly, and is still on pace for a roll-out before the end of March – possibly as soon as next week.  Once that happens, I can guarantee you will either think it’s the greatest thing ever, or you will immediately panic and beg to go back to the old platform.  There will be no in-between.

The Opponent

They suck.  If you’re in a hurry, scroll forward to the next section.

If you’re not busy, the details: Hertha has been rather poor all year, and manager Markus Babbel was fired over the winter.  Replacement Michael Skibbe lasted only five matches (all defeats) before he was let go as well.  New manager Otto Rehhagel’s tasks is clear: keep Hertha out of the bottom three.  This would require scratching out a lot of draws against more talented clubs, especially those in the top 4, so expect a defensive mindset to the home side this Saturday.

The hell of it is, their roster isn’t that bad.  They have ex-Bayern GK Thomas Kraft and middie Andreas Ottl, two guys who couldn’t quite get into the starting line-up in Munich, but who have some ability.  They have young striker Pierre-Michel Lasogga, one of the stars of Germany’s U-21 team.  They have the Croatian defender Andre Mijatović, a veteran guy who’s not awful.  It goes to show, the bottom part of the 1. Bundesliga has gotten really tough – a club can’t just go buy 2 or 3 solid players and figure they’ll grind out enough results to avoid the drop.  If you want to stay at the highest levels in German football, you need depth at every position, you need to stay healthy, and you need to bring you’re a-game every week.  That’s what makes it a great league, though.

Final Thoughts

Because I’m in a good mood, you get 7 final thoughts rather than the usual 2 or 3.

- If goal.com is to be believed, Bayern is keen to bring in Hannover veteran Altin Lala.  In related news, goal.com should never be believed.

- The draw for the Quarterfinals of the Champions League takes place tomorrow morning (or afternoon, depending on your time zone).  If I get up early enough, I’ll do a separate post with a Chat Box.  But no promises.

- Reader Vincent had a good comment on one of this week’s threads, and he later expended it over e-mail.  In his words, only slightly edited:

“I wanted to take this chance to write about Bayern’s current form … Bayern have been in this same position before, to be more precise in the 2008-2009 UCL campaign. In that year in the first round of the knockout stage we crushed Sporting Clube 12 – 1 on aggregate (an UCL record for a knockout tie that is still unbeaten), winning both legs, 5 – 0 in Lisbon and 7 -1 in the Allianz Arena. Butt, Lahm, DvB, Bastian, Ribbery and Muller were on that team. We thought we were poised for greatness. Then we were paired with Barcelona for the next round, the mood in whole club (and in the stands) was high, we were confident (I would say even arrogant) that we would beat Barcelona (a side that wasn’t even playing to the same level they are today) … Well we were humiliated 4 – 0 in Camp Nou for the first leg, that was the most embarrassing defeat I have faced as a Bayern fan …. Klinsmann was sacked and everybody forgot that we scored 12 past the unfortunate Portuguese and had a trophyless season.

We as fans need to learn the lesson. Lahm, Schweini, Muller and Ribbery need to remember that year and learn the lesson. We can’t let that to happen again. That’s why the players need to leave the arrogance and complacency of the past behind them. Jupp has to keep the players focused, concentrated, humble and grounded to earth. The reality is that we still cannot be considered a force to reckon in Europe. We have crashed miserably (except on our sole Final appearance in Madrid) for the last years and lack the consistency of the true European elite. I still remember the 90s, and the early 00s in those years the Olympiastadion in Munich was one of the most feared venues in European football, all the elite teams were afraid of us, because we were a team that fought, tackled, had tactic order and were ruthless in front of goal week in and week out, not in just 5 or 6 games a year …

Yesterday’s match was really encouraging, but we need more performances like that to keep us in the race. I think we are in a great position to leave the recent past behind us and finally become a true European elite team.”

- The Euro 2012 kit for Die Nationalelf is finally available for sale.  Check it out:

I kind of like the diagonal stripes.  I wish they were on the back, too.  Pretty cool, though.

- Our match is the last one of the day on Saturday – 1:30 Eastern in the USA, 6:30 PM Berlin time.  It will be on ESPN Deportes and ESPN 3 in North America, and we’ll be here with a Match Day Chat Box and immediately afterwards with a recap and highlights.

- Wikipedia has the following to say about Berlin’s Olympiastadion:

In 1998, Berliners debated the destiny of the Olympiastadion in light of the legacy it represented for Germany.

Some wanted to tear the stadium down and build a new one from scratch, while others favoured letting it slowly crumble “like the Colosseum in Rome.”

Unfortunately, neither of those sides prevailed.  Dammit.  They ended up renovating it, and it actually looks very sleek and modern now.  Why do all the fun ideas always get shot down?

- Finally, in the unlikely event that anyone has been keeping track, this post marks one year since I first took over this blog.  My whole life, I could never even figure out what I was looking for.  But the first time I hit “publish,” I knew I had found it.  Thanks for reading.

(1) The back line of Alaba – Badstuber – Boateng – Lahm is our best bet for the near future

I’d caution against too much optimism here, because they haven’t really been tested very heavily.  In the last two matches, our offense was on fire early and the midfield controlled a majority of possession – the defense basically just had to mop up a handful of chances.  Still, they did a good job with that.  Yesterday, both fullbacks looked good, and the few times that Basel got a good ball into a threatening spot, Badstuber and Boateng did well to clear.

Regular readers know that I’ve been one of Rafinha’s biggest supporters.  And I do still think he could be a useful and very productive player, in the right capacity.  But right now, Alaba and Lahm seem to be our best FB pairing.  Alaba was dangerous getting forward and linking up with Ribery and the middies (which we always knew he could do), but he also did a good job of defending against a pretty dangerous Basel offense.  And that weird chop-stroke slide tackle that he’s developed is devastating – it always looks like he’s going to foul someone, because he brings his back leg down in a savage arc, but he actually just slams his foot into the ground before it gets to the player he’s marking.  So either he’ll get a piece of the ball, or he’ll just force the opposing wing to dribble further upfield to try to get around him (where the offensive player usually runs up against the end line).

Lahm looks good at RB, and was useful in springing Robben a few times.  Although we ought to stop jerking him around.  I’m sure Heynckes will now move him BACK to LB next month.

(2) Once Bastian returns, we still have a numbers problem

This is a good problem to have – certainly much better than the problems we had in January and February.  But if Bastian is back to 100% and in the starting line-up, then we’re left with the same issue that we had at the start of the season: where does Toni Kroos fit in?

He can play in the central attacking midfielder spot, but Müller has been doing a better job there recently, and yesterday’s performance left little doubt that the Ribery – Müller – Robben line is the most likely to lead to dangerous chances, constant pressure on opposing defenses, and goals.  In the midfield, Bastian figures to get one of those spots once he comes back.  Ideally, we could play him next to Kroos, but it’s usually a better idea to have one defensive minded guy at the CDM spot (i.e., Gustavo).  So, we can either try Kroos-Schweinsteiger in the midfield, or use Kroos as the super-sub – coming on in the second half at either the CDM spot, or in the hole for Müller (or with Müller moving to one of the wings of Robben or Ribery needs to come off).

(3) There’s a fine line between winning big and losing

Yesterday was an amazing win, and looking back on it, Basel never had a chance.  It’s worth noting, though, that our squad was mostly the same as the last time we played Basel – starting line-up added Müller and Gustavo and lost Tymo and Rafinha, with Alaba and Kroos each moving back a bit.  But Gomez, Robben, Ribery, Neuer, Boateng, Badstuber were in the starting XI, and involved in similar roles, in both matches.

The outcome was massively different.  But does that mean our players got a whole lot better over the course of 3 weeks?  To an extent, maybe they did.  And certainly playing at home helps.  But in that last Basel match, we had 3 good chances in the early going: Gomez blew a header, and Ribery had two shots – one that he blasted wide, and one that was well-saved by Sommer.  If any one of those had gone in, Basel would have had to push forward looking for a goal, and Bayern would have had a chance to go on to a decisive win.

I’m not saying we would have scored 7.  Yesterday was a special performance, when everything was clicking.  I just think it’s interesting to see how a team can struggle to get past a defensive-minded opponent, but once you get a goal or two (which can be a matter of inches), the opponent has to push forward, and the floodgates can open.

If you think there’s anything else we learned from the past two matches, feel free to share your opinion.  You can leave it in the comments, or write to us at bayern.offside@yahoo.com anytime.  Back tomorrow or Friday morning with the Hertha preview.  We’re on the road, and if we come out flat in that one, things can start to fall apart just as quickly as they came together.  Thanks for reading.

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I’m not even watching the draw for the next round.  Give us anyone you want.  Give us Barca.  We don’t fucking care.

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Some of the comments everyone has left – in case they get eaten by the system, I’m reposting them here.

Havde | March 13th, 2012 at 2:47 pm

Holy fucking shit what a game! felt like 3 hours of pure fun. Exept for the first minutes of course when i almost crapped my pants lol. Well can the Gomez doubters stfu for a while now? And I will try to be more kind to Robben of course

bblastroid | March 13th, 2012 at 2:51 pm

I FEEL LIKE IM REALLYY HIGH… what a win. what a perfomance. intoxicating shit.

cj | March 13th, 2012 at 2:55 pm

OMG what a goal from Thomas!!!

eddinanM3 | March 13th, 2012 at 3:02 pm

@Havde, I will never, ever, ever say another word of doubt about Gomez again. He came to play when we needed it the most!

Huge performance from Bayern and it was on all fronts offensive defensive, everything clicked.

I guess Barca ain’t the only team in Europe that can put 7 on the board in a CL game at home!!!

mohammad hassan | March 13th, 2012 at 3:05 pm

i dont know if i was really watching bayren play or if it was another one of my daydreams. earlier today i had a fantasy that bayren won 8-0 with gomez scoring 6 goals, it almost came true. Mia-san-Mia

mohammad hassan | March 13th, 2012 at 3:06 pm

omg, and did yall see the look robben gave Joo-Ho, when he fouled him, i even got scared.

mohammad hassan | March 13th, 2012 at 3:07 pm

@eddinanM3, we put 7 goals and conceded 0

alpinepete | March 13th, 2012 at 3:07 pm

…I think its time for me and some others to eat some crow with regards to JH….I wonder if he is finally allowed to let us play like Bayern….not a mini-me Barca?

ChrisP | March 13th, 2012 at 3:07 pm

@Havde
He played a great game, but I still don’t like him lol. But seriously, if he could play like that not even every game, just most of the time, then you wouldn’t he wouldn’t be my scapegoat.

Anyway, what a game. I love that Muller got a goal, and it came from Robben’s pass. The more they play well together then the better things will turn out for us. Not much drop in Ribery’s form either with the Lahm switch. With this current form, who gets benched for Schweini?

I hope that this carries over in an away game, that will be the first true test of this new found form. Until then, I don’t care about anything.

RW911 | March 13th, 2012 at 3:08 pm

I’d echo Lahm here.. no Barca or Real… but

IF we were to be given such a draw at all, let it be given to us for the Final.

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mohammad hassan | March 13th, 2012 at 3:10 pm

so now muller or kroo? hmmmmmmm….

eddinanM3 | March 13th, 2012 at 3:11 pm

A very big and comprehensive performance from Franck Ribery in the Allianz Arena, you can say he loses the ball too much or sometimes complains too much, but you ca never question the quality and desire that he brings to the pitch when he plays. Franck was the man of the match for me as gave Basel more headaches than Vogel could have ever imagined in his worst nightmare! I was very happy for Franck and the team as a whole, the chemistry seems to be much better and people are going the extra mile to do more than their share and that is key.

You got to be happy for Muller too as he finally hit the net with a very nice shot to get us going, I hope that gives him some much needed confidence going forward for the rest of the season.

eddinanM3 | March 13th, 2012 at 3:17 pm

@911, the odds are that we get one of those two in the semis at the least if we can the there. For now I am just happy to still be playing and we will give anybody a real dog fight in the quarterfinals!

ps. what if Real Madrid lose tomorrow???

Rexxx | March 13th, 2012 at 3:18 pm

Ribery was amazing! I also loved to see how well Robben and Lahm plays together, Lahm should stay on right side. If Schweini will start the next one, I’d replace him with Goose.

I never expected anything this good! MIA SAN MIA!

RW911 | March 13th, 2012 at 3:18 pm

Robben is not a 100% yet but he surely is progressing.
He seems to do better with Lahm on his side than Rafinha.

Ribery was AWSM

Gomez, speechless.

zbavsc13 | March 13th, 2012 at 3:19 pm

I think one thing we really should take away from this is to let of Jupp. How many of us would have thought switching Lahm to the right would make such an impact??

Kate | March 13th, 2012 at 3:39 pm

It is at moments like this that I really don’t understand goal.coms ratings. Gomez was amazing and I don’t begrudge him his 9.5 rating at all, but surely Ribbery deserves at least a 9. And while Somner made some great saves, Neuer made a couple saves as well. Somner had 7 go past him and he gets a higher score than Neuer? Are you kidding me? I am happy with Kroosie’s 8. He had a good game.

As to who to play and who gets left out, I still want a Kroos- Scheini pairing with Mueller in the hole and Robbery on the wings!

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scalia | March 13th, 2012 at 5:50 pm

thank you lads, you all just did what i have in mind. thank you, thank you. Congrats to all Bayern fans! mia san mia!

Ollikahn | March 13th, 2012 at 6:07 pm

Tomas,

Our thin squad is pretty much what we need to live with for the rest of this season – you may be right about Basel’s toughness but we will only know for sure after the next 2 away games. Also that implies Benfica are better than both Man Utd & Basel as they topped their UCL group and 2nd in the Portuguese Superliga.

I am half-convinced this team can do the job, but the Berlin & Gladbach games are crucial and we can answer all our critics by just winning both of them (no need for a fancy 7-0 drubbing, of course I would prefer that nonetheless!)

Seth_VH | March 13th, 2012 at 6:15 pm

I’m kind of happy that the team went through that little spat of a time. I’d rather of have it in the past and drop points then rather than in a few weeks. BVB is so close they can smell blood and will drop points to us and a few others, BMG will have a trial beating one of the best european teams for a 3rd time this year, and I say bring on Real or Barca in the CL (actually just kidding about that). FCB is still fighting on 3 fronts and can/will bring home some silverware! I What doesn’t break this team apart will only make it stronger. I can’t wait to get to Munchen and see a game or two. MIA SAN MIA!!!

eddinanM3 | March 13th, 2012 at 6:28 pm

OK, now what is Jupp going to do with Alaba??? Leave him or move him? And what happens when DVB is healthy?

@Vrdo4ever, I will drink to that.

alpinepete | March 13th, 2012 at 6:28 pm

@Seth_VH no truer words were ever writ…I was thinking the same thing myself. Could it be diabolically great strategy? Coming into the business end of the season and being poised right behind the BL leaders, no one expecting greatness and all of a sudden….a runaway freight train of a football team that everyone thought had imploded!!…I wouldn’t put it past the likes of Heynkes, KHR and ULI!!

Gomez

Ribery – Müller – Robben

Kroos – Gustavo

Alaba – Badstuber – Boateng – Lahm

Neuer

(Same line-up as the recent win over Hoffenheim – let’s hope they perform in a similar fashion).

For Basel

A. Frei – Streller

F. Frei – Cabral – Xhaka – Shaqiri

Joo Ho – Dragovic – Abraham – Steinhöfer

Sommer

Park Joo Ho’s injury has been overcome, and he’s in the starting line-up.  Also, I may have misspelled his name as “Hu” yesterday – sorry, “Park Joo Ho” is correct.

I don’t have too much more to say.  Very anxious, but also cautiously hopeful.  I’m headed out to watch at the pub, so I won’t be here to monitor the Chat Box.  Please try to avoid graphically sexual or violent language, and avoid fighting with one another.

Speaking of that Chat Box – here you go:

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Just remember, boys: you can’t score 2 without first scoring 1.  Viva viva FC Bayern!

Nonetheless, I think Bayern supporters are feeling quietly optimistic.  I won’t say “confident,” because you can never feel confident when you’re losing, but we definitely have a shot.  Our offense played well last week, and in all of our last 3 matches, we’ve created numerous chances and looked dangerous from the wings (the 1 of those 3 we lost, vs. Leverkusen, we still had several good opportunities – it was poor finishing and a few good defensive plays that kept us out).  Ninety minutes is a long time for Basel to sit back in a shell and try to ward us off, especially if Schweinsteiger is on the pitch.  Which leads us to …

The Line-Up

Three Bayern starters limped off with knocks in the win over Hoffenheim: Gomez, with a bad cut on his shin, Boateng, with muscle tightness, and Robben, with generic, seemingly-painful-but-non-specified lower body ailments.  The club’s official site says that “Of the three, Gomez is causing the most concern” – interesting.  If he can’t go, we could either start Olic in his place, or move Müller up top.  I doubt Petersen is ready for this kind of match.

Heynckes is playing it quiet with respect to Bastian, telling everyone he hasn’t decided yet.  I felt like he looked good enough in his brief appearance on Saturday, although he wasn’t really being challenged by that TSG midfield (which has pretty much packed it in by the time he came on).

I’ll throw out my prediction – remember this is what I think WILL happen, not necessarily should:

I think Gomez will be fit enough to play, and I think Heynckes will let him.  I think Rafinha will either (1) still be under the weather with his illness, or (2) Heynckes will at least pretend that he is, and take this opportunity to leave him on the bench without having to embarrass him.  And I think he will suddenly decide this is the time to leave his boy Kroos out of the line-up.  Don’t ask me why – just a hunch.

The Opponent

As we pretty much already knew, Basel is not a team to be taken lightly.  But, I don’t think they should inspire a lot of fear, either.  You could say, “well, they only have to play defense” – but that’s pretty much all they did for the majority of the last match, and we still got several good, clear chances on their goal.  If I had to bet on it, I’d say the chances that they keep us out for the full 90 minutes aren’t that high.  The bigger problem, in my mind, is actually the danger that they take advantage of our aggression to hit us with a counter-attack; if they pick up a single goal, we’d need 3 to advance (having failed to notch a single away goal) which really WOULD let them park the bus.

Park Joo Hu will likely be absent for Basel, having missed their recent domestic match (a 2-0 win over Grasshoppers).  Otherwise, they’re at full strength.  Shaqiri, Streller and the two Freis are their best offensive options, but it was GK Yann Sommer and substitute wingback Valentin Stocker who did us in last time.  Their starting CBs, Dragovic and Abraham, generally played us pretty well, although Ribery and Gomez both found some room to operate and could (should?) have scored in the first half.

Final Notes

- Let’s hope the home/away difference is a real phenomenon and not a coincidence: Bayern has won 8 straight at home and, amazingly, all by margins of at least 2 goals.  And you know the crowd will be up for this one.

- Looks like it will be fairly warm tomorrow, with little-to-no chance of rain.  Good goal-scoring weather.

- If you’re in the US, keep in mind the daylights savings change will alter the start time: the match will kick off at 3:45 PM Eastern our time, rather than 2:45.  Locally, it’s still the same – 8:45 PM Munich time.  We’ll be here before the match with line-ups and a Match Day Chat Box.  I try not to censor or edit the Chat Box posts, and I know supporter’s immediate reactions can be intense and sometimes crude.  But let’s try to keep it within reason.  Thanks for reading.

So, after our post last week demonstrating some reader-submitted stats, we received a few more e-mails addressing statistical differences between FC Bayern and our Bundesliga rivals.  One of our readers, known here as “Ollikahn,” wrote in with a detailed examination of not only goals-for and goals-against, but variability and skew ratios of each club’s results each week.  In other words, he set out to determine the effect of all of the club’s (but especially Bayern’s) propensity to rack up big goal numbers some weeks, then have long stretches of quiet.  Ollikahn has a much better grasp of statistical analysis than I, so I’m just trying to follow along here as best I can.  If I screwed something up, let me know.

This chart shows “Goals For” for each of the three clubs at the top of the 1. Bundesliga in each of this season’s 25 match weeks so far:

The first thing you’ll notice is that Bayern, in addition to generally being a high-scoring team, has a large variance in when the goals come.  Some hard evidence for that statement:

“Skewness” indicates the extent to which small numbers of games account for larger-than-usual percentages of the total goals-scored figure.  “Kurtosis,” if I understand correctly, refers to the degree to which the number of goals scored when graphed over multiple weeks is “peaked” – in other words, how far each club’s goal scoring from week to week hews is closer to the mean (commonly called “average”) vs. further from the mean (and therefore closer to the peak – whether high or low).  BVB’s lower numbers for standard deviation, skewness, and kurtosis indicate that they are a machine of regularity.  While their mean goals-per-week figure is slightly lower than ours (2.08 vs. 2.32), they’re basically a good bet to score two goals a week.  Whereas we have a slightly higher mean, but we might get 5 or 7 one week, then 0 the next two weeks.  But that’s just my interpretation of the data – Ollikahn puts it this way:

“The high skewness of 0.96 for FCB indicates that most of our goals have come against fewer sides whereas for BMG & BVB have lower skew of 0.85 and 0.65 respectively.”

Now, “Goals Against” for the same clubs

And the analytical compilation for Goals Against:

The standard deviations are lower here, because none of these 3 clubs are likely to give up 6 or 7 in a game like Freiburg or TSG might.  Nonetheless, our “skewness” and kurtosis are still the highest, owing to the fact that we’ve allowed 3 goals on 2 separate occasions.  Neither ‘Gladbach nor BVB has done that even once.  As Ollikahn says: “for goals against, BMG is better than both BVB and FCB as they have least skewness.”  In fact, take away BMG’s week 9 2-2 draw vs. Leverkusen, and they allow 1 or 0 goals every single week.

Same clubs, same sample size, numbers for “Goal Differential” here:

For this last chart, “goal differential” refers to the +/- for that particular week, not to the ongoing aggregate goal differential.  And, given what we saw on the first two charts, no surprise that the analytical compilation for Goal Differential shows more variability for Bayern:

“Skewness” doesn’t really matter as much here, because there is no total pot into which all goal differential numbers are drawn from (aside from the general tabulation of goal differential).  But the standard deviation for Bayern’s goal differential is huge, and our “Min” and “Max” are both higher and lower than either of the other club’s numbers for either category.  In other words, we are more likely to win by 6 or 7 (which, unfortunately, doesn’t count for any more than a win by 1), whereas the other clubs in are more of a level-sledding “2 goals for and ½ of a goal allowed per week” pattern.  Take it away, Olli:

“We have the highest standard deviation when it comes to goals for, goals against and goal difference of 1.99, 0.99 and 2.43 respectively (while BMG is at 1.39, 0.58 and 1.36 respectively) [Even Klopp is not as good as Favre as BVB has std dev of 1.55, 0.64 and 1.66 and both are still better than Heynckes]

The histogram reveals that BMG have won most of their games by 1 or 2 goal margins and FCB are the most inconsistent and stick out in my graphs by having the max number of losses and conceding 3 goals in 2 games.”

[This is Phil again] This is somewhat damning evidence for Bayern – take away our 7-1 win, our 7-0 win, and our pair of 5-0 wins, our impressive-looking offensive stats start to disappear.  Because a 7-0 win isn’t worth any more than a 2-1 win, you’d rather be able to count on scoring 2 goals for every game, rather than have a random crap-shoot as to whether we’ll explode for 7 or get shut out.

At the same time, the fact that we can explode for 7 shows that we do have the capacity to do it.  What we need to do is improve consistency, and especially to force our way of ruts where we just run our heads into the wall for 30 or 40 minutes at a time.

I’ll stop here, because I don’t want to jinx us for Tuesday.  Whatever else we’ve done this year, we won’t be coming into this match in a rut.  If we can just keep the form from this weekend going, we have a good shot at getting the 2 goals we need.

I’ll be back tomorrow with the Basel preview, and also with some more reader-submitted stats – some of which may point us in yet a new direction.  Thanks for reading.