Why Bayern Munich are so reliant on Kingsley Coman

8:00am on Saturday 19th December 2020
By Stefan Bienkowski

This evening Bayern Munich take on a Bayer Leverkusen side that are not only top of the Bundesliga table but also a team that have yet to taste defeat in the league this season.

It’s this in-form Peter Bosz side that have made the Bavarian giants look a little lethargic in comparison, after what must have been a gruelling and exhausting treble-winning season last time around.

Indeed, if there are cracks in Hansi Flick’s team Leverkusen will surely do their best to expose them. Bayern will need to be at their very best and will, most likely, once again turn to Kingsley Coman to help them overcome this new hurdle.

A reliance on Coman in the Bundesliga

It may seem odd to highlight Coman as Bayern’s most important player ahead of this match, following Manuel Neuer and Robert Lewandowski’s success at the FIFA Best awards in midweek. However, while Neuer keeps the ball out of the net and Lewandowski taps it in to the other one at the opposite end of the field, Coman has for some time been the real drive behind Bayern’s ability to grind out results.

We need only look at Bayern’s Bundesliga campaign for proof of the Frenchman’s incredible form this season. In nine league games, Coman has already scored two and created seven assists. Not bad for a player that managed just four goals and four assists last season.

And these aren’t just consolation goals or simple assists after a routine Bayern routing in the German top flight. In his team’s last five league games alone, Coman has scored an equaliser against Werder Bremen, scored an equaliser then assisted the winner against Stuttgart, set up all three goals against RB Leipzig , assisted an equaliser against Union Berlin and most recently in midweek against Wolfsburg he set up Lewandowski for Bayern’s equaliser.

In fact, if we were to take Coman’s contributions away from Bayern’s league campaign to date we’d find Flick’s side with an incredible five fewer points and sitting rather uncomfortably in fourth or fifth place in the Bundesliga table.

2020/21 Coman's goals & assists

Season	Goals	Assists
2015/16	0.22	0.41
2016/17	0.16	0.08
2017/18	0.32	0.32
2018/19	0.45	0.13
2019/20	0.26	0.19
2020/21	0.47	0.63

That's not to say that Bayern have suddenly downed tools and Coman is the only one trying anymore. A more accurate description would be that the French winger seems to have come into his own under Flick and is now performing better than he ever has before for the German giants.

In his sixth season with the Munich side, Coman is currently averaging a remarkable 1.10 goals and assists per 90 minutes in all competitions this season. Not only is that over twice his contribution during last season’s historic run for the club, but it’s far and beyond anything he’s ever averaged over a full season in Munich.

Naturally, by the time we get to the end of the season that number may come back down to earth, but it’s a good sign for Bayern that the Frenchman has already surpassed his assist total for last season and we still haven’t even got to the mid-way point in the campaign yet.

Plenty of Bayern’s key players will be determined to make the difference when they arrive at the BayArena tonight to face Leverkusen tonight, but if Flick is hoping to rely on one game-winning talent in his squad it’ll almost certainly be Coman.