Bayern looking to bounce back from Champions League defeat against St. Pauli

Bayern are looking to put their first defeat of the season behind them and quickly get back to winning ways as they host St. Pauli for Matchday 12 in the Bundesliga on Saturday (kick-off: 15:30 CET, live coverage on fcbayern.com and in the FC Bayern app with our text commentary and free web radio). Here’s all you need to know ahead of the game in our preview.

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“The last 30 minutes wasn’t at our level anymore. Arsenal took the upper hand and deserved to win. It wasn’t an issue over the 90 minutes but of the last 30,” said head coach Vincent Kompany on Friday of the midweek 3-1 Champions League loss in London. The Belgian now wants his team to immediately look ahead and at least maintain their six-point lead over RB Leipzig at the Bundesliga summit coming into the weekend.

“We’ll keep going as we’ve been doing in recent weeks and months,” added sporting director Christoph Freund at the pre-match press conference. That has seen Bayern chalk up 31 points from the first 11 games for the joint-best start to a Bundesliga season. Last weekend a Michael Olise-inspired display saw Bayern come from 2-0 down to beat Freiburg 6-2, but Kompany was quick to point out that both of last season’s encounters with Pauli were tight affairs, FCB ultimately winning 1-0 and 3-2: “We had two hard games against them. They fought for a long time.”

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“It’s good that we get to show what we’re about only three days later. We never want to lose. We accept it but don’t like it. But it’s about showing a reaction at this stage of the season,” the coach continued. Victory over St. Pauli would help rebuild confidence as the team continue through this busy period to end the year, with the following three games over the next week coming at Union Berlin in the DFB Cup, away at VfB Stuttgart in the Bundesliga and then at home to Sporting Lisbon in the Champions League.

Read more from the pre-match press conference here:

Opponent: St. Pauli

St. Pauli are going through the dreaded second-season syndrome in the Bundesliga. After making a club-best start to this campaign with seven points from three games, Alexander Blessin’s side have since lost each of the last eight. Despite some close results and valiant efforts, they’ve been unable to escape that downward spiral.

They have struggled to score goals and are now conceding many more than they did in their first season back in the top flight, when their defence was crucial to their ultimately comfortable survival. They are yet to win a game outside Hamburg, with their sole away victory coming at city rivals HSV. Nevertheless, Die Kiezkicker still believe they can turn things around. “Maybe it’ll be easier in Munich because we’re such big underdogs and can go into the game knowing we have nothing to lose,” said Blessin.

Get the lowdown on St. Pauli:

Team news

“There are no injury problems,” Kompany confirmed at the press conference. It means only Alphonso Davies, who is partially training with the team again, and Jamal Musiala will miss out again.

St. Pauli also had good news on the injury front as their coach announced that, “Manolis Saliakas has been training again, as well as Adam Dzigala. He took a hand to the face in training on Wednesday. Arkadiusz Pyrka had cramp but was quickly able to join in again. Everyone in attack is fit now Ricky-Jade Jones is back.”

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What the coaches say