How do Bayern replace a player like Jamal Musiala?

The attacking midfielder is Bayern's most important player and plugging the hole he'll leave behind for the rest of the year won't be easy.

Bayern Munich’s summer went from bad to worse this weekend, when midfielder Jamal Musiala suffered a broken fibula following a rash challenge from Paris Saint-Germain goalkeeper Gianluigi Donnarumma.

As if the Club World Cup wasn’t already a big enough distraction for the Bundesliga champions, this injury now threatens to throw Vincent Kompany’s preparations for the new season into complete disarray. In no uncertain terms, Bayern have lost the very player that they’ve spent the last two or three seasons building their team around. So how do Bayern go about replacing a player like Musiala?

Defining Musiala’s role at Bayern Munich

Before we can figure out a way to replace Musiala, it’s important to first note and quantify what it is that he offers Kompany’s team. And going off last season’s numbers, it seems perfectly clear that he is first and foremost a goalscorer in this team. Although the German international did bag eight assists across all competitions, he only averaged 0.10 assists per 90 in the Bundesliga. That placed him eleventh among his Bayern team mates and when we couple that with the fact that he was twelfth in Kompany’s team for passes into the box and third for passes that led to a shot (but considerably behind both Joshua Kimmich and Michael Olise), it implies that the player simply wasn’t terribly interested in setting goals up as much as he was scoring them.