Bayern Munich held on after scoring an early goal to walk away from the Commerzbank-Arena with a 1-0 victory. The match gives Pep Guardiola's men their second win in as many matches and moves them to the top of the table with six points.
Eintracht Frankfurt vs. Bayern Munich: Final score 1-0, Bayern hold on for all three points
While there were moments of panic late, Bayern Munich left the Commerzbank-Arena as 1-0 victors over Eintracht Frankfurt.
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Armin Veh wanted to put last week's 6-1 loss behind them and made four changes to the lineup including bringing Stefan Aigner and Takashi Inui to the the starting eleven. Guardiola made one change from last week, bringing in Xherdan Shaqiri for Arjen Robben.
The match started brilliantly for Bayern with Bastian Schweinsteiger sending a header just over the crossbar in the 3rd minute. Frankfurt went right back down and was the first side to test the opposition goalkeeper when Inui forced Manuel Neuer into a save. Toni Kroos rattled the post in the 9th minute with a header from a David Alaba cross.
Bayern opened the scoring in the 13th minute with a fantastic goal from Mario Mandzukic. Philipp Lahm played a ball out wide to Thomas Müller on the right side of the Frankfurt penalty area. The midfielder lofted a cross into the area, and Mandzukic was on hand to power home a volley to give Bayern the 1-0 advantage.
Bayern nearly had the second just after the half hour mark, but Kevin Trapp made a fantastic save to deny Dante. Bayern controlled the first half allowing only the occasional counterattack from Frankfurt to truly threaten. Unlike last week against Gladbach, Bayern did well to get bodies back to stifle the majority of Frankfurt’s attacks.
Frankfurt came close to an equalizer just before the end of the first half. Alexander Meier put the ball into the back of the net after a pass from Johannes Flum. However, it was blown dead for offside. The replay was inconclusive to say the least.
The second half didn’t have a lot of chances for either side with the Bavarians dominating with well over 70 percent possession. Bayern had a few opportunities through Robben and Schweinsteiger that forced Trapp into making good saves.
The best opportunity in the second half came after a near-catastrophic mistake from Neuer. The goalkeeper came way out of his box in an attempted header but was beaten to the ball by Srdjan Lakic. By the time the forward was able to get to the ball and shoot at the empty net, Dante was back and easily blocked the attempt.
Bayern finished the match with a 90 percent pass completion rate and over three times the number of completed passes than Frankfurt. However, Guardiola can be happy that his side is leaving Frankfurt with all three points.
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