Kompany out, Danks in the dugout
Bayern’s biggest absence for the first Klassiker of the season is on the touchline. Head coach Vincent Kompany will miss the match while he recovers from recent health issues, and assistant Aaron Danks will make the decisions, according to [1]. [2] reports that Kompany is recovering in hospital after collapsing while watching Bayern’s second team train.
The timing is awkward. Bayern beat Freiburg 3-1 on 25 October to return to the top of the Bundesliga, and they are unbeaten in the league and the Champions League this season. A settled side has produced those results, and a change in the dugout for the biggest domestic game of the autumn tests how well the staff and players carry the work Kompany has done.
The input gives no detail on how Danks will set the team up, so any talk of tactical changes would be guesswork. What can be said is that the match plan will be shaped by a squad with several unresolved fitness questions.
A squad full of question marks
The injury picture is the other concern. Luis Díaz will definitely not be available, and [1] lists four more players as uncertain:
- Joshua Kimmich is doubtful.
- Aleksandar Pavlović is doubtful.
- Manuel Neuer is doubtful.
- Jamal Musiala is fighting to be involved but is not yet certain to play.
The confidence attached to those reports is modest, about 0.6 for Kimmich, Pavlović and Neuer and 0.5 for Musiala, so they should be read as live doubts rather than settled absences. Any of them could be fit by Saturday, and any could miss out.
The spread of the doubts matters. Neuer would anchor the defence, Kimmich and Pavlović sit in the middle of the pitch, and Musiala is one of the creative sources behind the attack. If several are missing together, Danks will be rebuilding more than one line, and he will be doing it in his first big match in charge.
Kane and an attack built to overwhelm
Whatever the team news, Bayern have the league’s most productive forward. Harry Kane scored 61 goals in 51 competitive matches for the club in 2025-26 and has 21 league goals since January 2026, the most in Europe’s top five leagues in that stretch, according to [3]. He has since won the Ballon d’Or, the first English winner since Michael Owen in 2001, and [4] notes he has scored 10 goals in his opening 12 games this season.
The team numbers match that individual form. Bayern have scored 25 league goals in seven games, and they beat RB Leipzig 6-1 on 17 October. The flip side is that they have also been drawing games: 2-2 at Augsburg, 3-3 at Viking in the Champions League and a draw with Arsenal last Wednesday.
Dortmund offer the opposite profile. They have the joint-second-best defence in the Bundesliga but have scored only 12 goals, per [1]. That is the central contest: the league’s most prolific attack against one of its tightest defences, with the sides level on points.
What it means
Bayern sit first in the Bundesliga with 17 points from seven games (five wins, two draws, no defeats), with 25 goals scored and 6 conceded. That goal difference of plus 19 is the foundation of their lead. Dortmund are level with them on points, so Saturday’s result decides who leads the table.
The form line is strong but not flawless. Three of Bayern’s last five results were draws (Augsburg, Viking and Arsenal), alongside wins at Freiburg and at home to Leipzig. Taken together, they score heavily but do not always close games out, and a week with a depleted squad and no head coach on the touchline could expose that.
The next fixture is Bayern v Dortmund on 31 October. It asks whether a team with Kane and the league’s best attack can cope with a disrupted week and a thinner squad, and whether it can break a defence that rarely concedes. Predict.game’s forecast for the match locks 24 hours before kick-off, so it will account for whichever of the doubtful players are named fit by then.
Sources
- Bundesliga.com: Bayern Munich and Borussia Dortmund evenly matched heading into Klassiker statement bundesliga.com ↩
- BBC Sport: Bayern continue unbeaten start in Kompany's absence bbc.co.uk ↩
- Football Italia: Kane mentions in Conte in Ballon d’Or speech: ‘I wouldn’t be standing here’ football-italia.net ↩
- BBC Sport: Kane ends England's 25-year Ballon d'Or wait - how he bucked the trend bbc.co.uk ↩
