Cast your mind back to early September at Bayern Munich. They had hoped to pair Florian Wirtz and Jamal Musiala behind Harry Kane, but by that point, the bubble had burst: Wirtz had joined Liverpool, while Musiala broke his leg (and won't be back until December at the earliest). Their first-choice left back, Alphonso Davies, was also out with a cruciate injury sustained in March.
Bayern signed Luis Díaz -- deemed surplus to requirements at Liverpool -- for a fee of around €70 million ($80 million), and folks said it was a desperation move for a guy who would turn 29 in January. They pursued Stuttgart's Nick Woltemade, only to be turned down and watch him head off to Newcastle United instead. They eventually settled on Nico Jackson on deadline day in a drawn-out and convoluted deal -- a loan with obligation to make permanent if he made a certain number of appearances -- that saw club officials effectively say "It's OK, we probably won't have to take him on a permanent basis because he's unlikely to play enough to trigger the clause."
Resident Bayern legend, and club supervisory board member, Karl-Heinz Rummenigge came out and said he felt "sorry" Wirtz ended up at Anfield because he would have been "better off" at Munich. He then justified missing out on Woltemade by referencing "financial madness" and how his club want to act in a "serious" and "financially sound" way.
On the pitch, Bayern needed an injury-time winner to beat third-division SV Wehen Wiesbaden in the German Cup on Aug. 27 and, three days later, nearly squandered a three-goal lead against little Augsburg.
It's Bayern and it's the Bundesliga, so nobody seriously thought they wouldn't be favorites for another title. But when it came to hype and excitement, it was all rather meh.
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Fast-forward to the present. Bayern have played 12 games in all competitions, winning every single one of them. They haven't always played well, but they've collected one W after another, and that's part of why coach Vincent Kompany got a salary bump and a contract extension until 2029.
So what changed in those 50-ish days? Were the doom-mongers simply way off in their Chicken Little predictions? Did players suddenly get a lot better? Or is the system so stacked in favor of bigger clubs, and the resource imbalance so great, that even if you limp along with other big clubs' unwanted and unneeded players (read: Jackson and Diaz) you'll still be a whole heck of a lot better than most of the teams you face?
The answer is maybe a little bit of all of the above, unsatisfying as that might be.
Sure, when your heart is set on Wirtz and you end up with Díaz, it's a bit like wanting a brand-new BMX for the holidays only to receive your older sister's hand-me-down Schwinn instead. It's not quite the same, but it will still get you where you need to go.
Losing Musiala was (and is) a massive blow, but Bayern auditioned other guys for the role and found that, when everything is firing right, the others can get the job done too, whether it's Serge Gnabry, Michael Olise or even Kane, who showed -- when given the chance to operate behind Jackson -- that he can "10" as effectively as he can be a No. 9.
Players who seemed off the boil last season started playing better. Gnabry, for one. Or eternal goalkeeper Manuel Neuer, with some even wanting to recall him to the national team. (Jonas Urbig, the latest in a long line of designated heirs apparent between the posts, might have to wait a while.) Jack-of-all trades midfielder Konrad Laimer showed he can impersonate a left back as well as a right back, doing a bang-up job in either position. Díaz already has half as many goal involvements (9) in just over two months as he did all of last year at Liverpool (18).
And then there's Kane. He didn't go off the boil last year, because he never does -- he just went from outstanding to whatever the next-best level is. Last year, he notched 38 goals in all competitions; this season, he already has 20 in just 12 games.
Is it down to paucity of competition? To some degree, maybe, but they didn't just face Pafos and Wehen over these 12 games. They beat Chelsea, Borussia Dortmund and Eintracht Frankfurt -- Champions League sides from Big Five leagues -- quite comprehensively too: the combined xG in those three games was 6.27 to 2.63.
You need sterner tests? OK, they're coming up in November: defending European champions Paris Saint-Germain on Nov. 4, followed by Premier League leaders Arsenal on the 26th, both on the road. Pass those tests and we'll have a much better sense of what Bayern are right now.
There will always be controversy and chaos and second-guessing around Bayern: That's the nature of many big clubs in general, and this one in particular. What we can say is that the early-September malaise has gone away and there's reason to believe they will kick it up a further notch when Davies and Musiala are fit and firing in the New Year.