Third place. It's an unthinkable fate even at the best of times for Germany's record champions, the team that has won around 50 percent of the Bundesliga titles since it came into existence.

But this season it seems all the more impossible, nothing short of an aberration in the balance of the universe. Six weeks ago, Bayern were making a laughing stock of anyone with the gall to call themselves a football team.

As they raced ahead, putting together an eight-match string of clean-sheets while knocking in 25 unanswered goals, revered pundits said only the Champions League could provide an adequate test for this awe-inspiring unit.

That test was supposed to come when the world's richest club, English Premiership leaders Manchester City, came to visit the Allianz Arena at the end of September, but that illustrious pack of all-stars was dispatched with disdain (2-0, Bayern remain the only team this season to stop the Mancunians from scoring).

Now it seems the Bundesliga actually presents a tougher challenge than the Champions League. After making short work of the Spanish minnows Villareal to secure top-spot in Group A, Bayern were humbled by German minnows Mainz on Sunday, going down 3-2. The upshot of that, along with their home defeat to Dortmund the week before, is that they are now third in the Bundesliga, a point behind Dortmund and Mönchengladbach.

Smack in the mouth

Bayern's players were sick with disgust on Sunday night. "If we give up the league lead, then that really is a low-point," said Thomas Müller. "It's hard to find the words."

His team-mates did their best to make up for Müller's failure to find the mots justes. "The fact that we're normally the better footballers is beyond question," said captain Philipp Lahm. "But if you only play football some of the time, you're going to lose."

"I think that was our worst performance of the season," said a frustrated Mario Gomez. "We got a real smack in the mouth."

But curses and self-flagellation are one thing. What about the wider implications? Are there any? Did we overestimate the early season triumphs, or is this a harmless blip, soon to be corrected?

Early season euphoria

Long-term Bayern observers agree that this is more than a blip. Michael Knippenkötter, football correspondent for Munich's TZ newspaper, is convinced that the early season run created an optical illusion.

"Bayern faced a lot of weak sides at the start of the season, like Wolfsburg, Hamburg, Kaiserslautern, and Freiburg," Knippenkötter told Deutsche Welle. "That gave them a lot of confidence and made them look a lot better than they were."

"But when they met teams that stood up to them, and were prepared to press energetically all over the pitch, their weaknesses were exposed," he concluded.

It's true that the one thing that Dortmund and Mainz have in common - despite offering rather different success rates - is that they are both young teams with an enormous appetite for a fight, and they are willing to maintain discipline in the ranks when they need to.

This also helps to explain their impressive displays in the Champions League. "Bayern beat Manchester City because the English came hoping to overwhelm with individual talent, but that won't work against Bayern," says Knippenkötter. "They didn't defend or play as a team."

The result against Villareal, meanwhile, was also deceptive. "The Spanish were so decimated by injuries, they couldn't put up much resistance anyway," said Knippenkötter.

Fateful collarbone

Patrick Strasser, Bayern correspondent for Munich's other mass-circulation paper Abendzeitung, had a more succinct explanation. "Mainz were clever, and Bayern miss Schweini," he told Deutsche Welle.

Indeed, it's hard to overlook the fact that Bayern's slump can be dated pretty precisely to the shoulder charge that Napoli's Gökhan Inler inflicted on Bastian Schweinsteiger during the Champions League tie on November 2.

Schweini's collarbone cracked, he was stretchered off, and Bayern were left to play out the last 37 minutes without him. Luckily, they were already 3-1 up, and though Napoli scored another, the Bavarians managed to hold out to the end.

There followed a decidedly shaky 2-1 victory over Bundesliga whipping boys Augsburg, where they had to rely on a superlative performance from goalkeeper Manuel Neuer. Then, after the international break, came Dortmund.

Schweini's role

If they ever underestimated Schweinsteiger's influence in Bayern's holding midfield before, the club's fans don't anymore. It's a position that requires the kind of authority and experience that few command. Certainly not Schweini's replacements, who to date have been either David Alaba - solid but barely 19 years old - or Luiz Gustavo and Anatoliy Tymoshchuk, a pair whose inconsistent performances have an unfortunate knack for the unexpected.

No wonder, then, that Strasser calls that collarbone fracture "a key experience for the whole team." "It's not just the bone that broke. Bayern's whole build-up play went with it," he added.

Knippenkötter agrees, but he also thinks Schweinsteiger's influence off the field has been missed too. "In the past couple of years his consistency has really had a huge effect on the team," he said.

Schweinsteiger is not expected to return to the field until after the winter break - mid-January - leaving the Munich maestros to face at least three more Bundesliga games (home to Bremen and Cologne and in Stuttgart), plus a dead rubber in Manchester, without him. By then, they could be back on top of the league, where they feel at home, or in an even bigger pickle.

But Bayern's mood is anything but despondent, according to the beat writers who see them on a day to day basis.

"So far, none of the team has been able to tell me exactly what has gone wrong," Knippenkötter said. "But it's not like they've lost the plot. Of course not. They just know they have to show what they've got as a team now."

Author: Ben Knight
Editor: Michael Lawton