Leverkusen v Bayern Preview: Can Havertz stop the Bavarians' march to the title?

9:30am on Friday 5th June 2020
By Martin Macdonald

We are only a handful of games into the returned Bundesliga campaign, but already Bayern are looking like champions-elect due to their victory in Der Klassiker and the subsequent seven-point lead gained over Dortmund at the top of the table.

Indeed, the defending champions are the only team to have won every single match since the league recommenced.

Leverkusen, meanwhile, have won three out of four and are currently positioned in fifth. They can take heart from the fact that the teams around them, like Gladbach and RB Leipzig, have also dropped more points that they would like recently.

Rather surprisingly, Leverkusen have won both of their last two encounters against Bayern, including this season when they won 2-1 at the Allianz Arena in November after a double from Leon Bailey.

⚽ Dortmund have failed again - how do they reach the next level?

Leverkusen FORM

As mentioned above, Leverkusen have won three out of four since playing started back, with the only points dropped coming in a comprehensive 4-1 loss at home to Wolfsburg.

They did, however, bounce back from that potentially damaging loss with a narrow 1-0 away victory at Freiburg, with Kai Havertz once again proving to be the saviour with the only goal of proceedings.

Frustratingly for Peter Bosz, he simply doesn't know what Leverkusen will turn up each week. Against Werder Bremen and Gladbach they won 4-1 and 3-1 respectively and were generally impressive throughout, but the manner of the defeat against Wolfsburg, at home, will be worrying for the Dutch head coach.

Bayern FORM

Hans Flick's side have been flawless recently, winning four out of four and scoring an impressive 13 goals in that time and conceding just two.

Robert Lewandowski has, naturally, been among the goals, scoring four in his last four including two in the 5-0 defeat of Fortuna Dusseldorf last weekend.

For the season so far, he has an xG of 26.75 and has outperformed that by 2.25 for a tally of 29 goals in 27 appearances.

Overall, Bayern are outperforming their xG, xA, and Expected Points for the campaign.