Europe or bust? Guardiola deserves credit for Bayern's Bundesliga brilliance

By Peter Staunton

By dint of Wolfsburg's last-gasp defeat to Borussia Monchengladbach, Bayern Munich are champions of Germany for the 25th time. Big deal. It's a bigger story, frankly, when Bayern don't win it.

Pep Guardiola is merely fulfilling the basic tenets of his duty by winning his second Bundesliga shield. Elsewhere, at other clubs, coaches are expected to keep their sides in the league or maybe qualify for European football. Guardiola is expected to win the league every year.

Rightly so, too. Bayern have long since reduced the Bundesliga to their own personal fiefdom. They have always pilfered their rivals' best players both at senior and underage level. No matter how well a different club might be doing, Bayern is the ultimate step up. No team can match their lure, their prestige, their money and their dominance.

It is not a fair fight. It is Bayern's league and the rest just play in it. As such, expectations are always sky-high.

Guardiola knows that but he does not necessarily like it. "I know which club I am at, it isn't enough to win the Bundesliga and the cup," he said earlier this week. "Only a treble is enough for a club like Real Madrid, Barcelona or Bayern."

Pep is a hyper-successful coach; the best and most innovative in the world. His legacy with Barcelona and now Bayern is measured in titles. Even winning la Liga though, long derided as a two-horse race, is regarded as a more difficult challenge than winning one in Germany. In that respect, he might feel hard done by.

He coached Bayern to the double in his first season in charge. During that first league campaign, he shattered the records set by Jupp Heynckes' all-conquering treble winners only a year earlier. Coming off a World Cup, with exhaustion a factor, this season was always going to be a tough one.

Even in light of constant injuries to key players, Guardiola has kept Bayern on course for the title all season long. It has been less about implementing a blueprint on a definitive scale but about managing resources; sending out 11 fit players and seeking to dominate game by game. Right now he cannot call on Arjen Robben, his best attacker, and David Alaba, his most complete player, to name only two. It has been like that since August when Javi Martinez broke down. It is a stroke of fortune that redoubtable players like Robert Lewandowski, Thomas Muller and Mario Gotze have remained fit all campaign because they are very much in the minority in Bayern's squad.



Bayern have kept far ahead of the pack in the Bundesliga in spite of those injuries but doubts persist about Guardiola and his football. Their form against immediate rivals in the Bundesliga top five has constantly been called into question.

They have failed to win only six Bundesliga matches this season. Five of those came in games against teams in the top five. Bayern have been defeated by runners-up elect Wolfsburg and Monchengladbach, another Champions League qualifier. Those two teams executed a plan perfectly to take the points from Bayern and reduced the champions to fairly ordinary performances. Gladbach took another point earlier in the season for good measure. Schalke, too, have managed to keep Bayern at bay twice.

Bayern, though, have been relentless in their other Bundesliga matches. They have not conceded a goal since the middle of March. They have scored four or more in victories on no fewer than nine occasions this season in the league. Those results included consecutive 8-0 and 6-0 wins. When they are on their game, no team in Europe is capable of stopping them.

This season has been curious, though, in the sense that there have been more laboured wins, domestically and in Europe, than Guardiola might have liked. As Wolfsburg and Gladbach have shown, there is a formula to beat Bayern and if that game plan is properly delivered then there is not a lot Bayern can do about it.

Guardiola has had to endure the frustration of watching his team go from side to side, probing high up the pitch for that one key chance that might turn the result in their favour. Witness the weekend win against Hertha for yet more evidence of this.

Guardiola has his methods. He has a clear idea of how he wants to win. Sometimes, however, he is powerless to prevent his players slipping into that same old sideways football. They are unable to conjure that one decisive dribble or overlap and all eyes turn to Guardiola to rectify it or at least share the blame.

That is not fair. He cannot kick the ball for them. He has proven that his football can carry Bayern into another dimension. Those fantastic performances do not come every week.

Perhaps it is the measure of the man and the club that people have come to expect just that. It seems, with Guardiola at the helm, Bayern have to win 4-0 every week in the league, claim the DFB-Pokal on the side and win the Champions League too to keep the critics off his back. You know, he's not far off.