Champions League analysis - Andy Brassell on Bayern Munich

European football expert Andy Brassell continues his analysis of our Champions League Group B opponents as we take on Bundesliga giants Bayern Munich in Matchday Two at the new stadium this evening.

A writer for The Guardian and Independent and a regular voice on talkSPORT and the 'On the Continent' and 'Football Ramble' podcasts, we'll publish Andy's analysis on Crvena zvezda (Red Star Belgrade) ahead of MD3.

Andy's analysis - Bayern Munich

"They are in transition. The team has been ageing and they’ve just got to the end of their last season with Arjen Robben and Franck Ribery- one retired, one off to Italy - but what they have done is prepare for that. Their wingers in Serge Gnabry and Kingsley Coman are excellent, both hugely important in the second half of last season and they’ve both started this season very well, both were brilliant for their countries as well, Germany and France.

"They started the transfer window in spectacular fashion by getting Benjamin Pavard and Lucas Hernandez in the bag, Hernandez cost pretty much twice the previous transfer record. At that point it looked like they going to create a whole, new, young team but that didn’t happen, they couldn’t get further reinforcements and now Gnabry and Coman are very heavily relied upon. They did get Ivan Perisic and Philippe Coutinho on loan late, but they felt like opportunist signings rather than planned, and not the young players they were looking at at the start of the window like Calum Hudson-Odoi and Leroy Sane."

"They’ve started the season okay. They are not as scary a prospect as they have been in recent years and there is still some debate over what their best team is. Robert Lewandowski scored 10 goals in the first six Bundesliga games and could have had more. It looks like they are reliant on him, but if you look at Barcelona and Messi, for instance, if you have a player that good, of course you rely on him to a certain extent. It’s interesting, when they played Cologne (21 September) and won 4-0, Lewandowski scored the first two goals but when they got a penalty, rather than go for a hat-trick – and he is the penalty taker – he gave it to Coutinho, so he could get off the mark. He’s been a good team player.

"One issue is they can’t decide where to play Joshua Kimmich. There is a school of thought that says he should be at the base of midfield, but another that says if they don’t play him at right-back, they really miss him there. At the moment, if Kimmich plays in midfield, Pavard will play right-back and they bring in another centre-half like Niklas Sule, Jerome Boateng or maybe Lucas Hernandez when David Alaba is fit again. For me, the biggest concern with Bayern, if you look at putting together their best team, does it have both Coutinho and Perisic? I’d say not. We’ll see if either or both start against Spurs."