Despite managerial upheaval, conflict between the fans and the board and their current position in second place, Bayern Munich are set to rack up an 11th consecutive Bundesliga title this season.

Before Bayern’s suffocating stranglehold of the German top flight over the past decade, no team had ever won the Bundesliga more than three times on the spin – and that had only happened on four occasions in the history of the competition.

The odds, as ever, are once again stacked in Bayern’s favour – but it could be closer than previous processions.

FiveThirtyEight uses its Forecasts and Soccer Power Index (SPI) ratings to predict every fixture throughout the Bundesliga season. The current calculations have churned out a table congested at both ends.

* as of 24/03/2023

Bayern are predicted to finish the 2022/23 campaign on 72 points, three more than Borussia Dortmund – the team that leads the Bundesliga by one point going into the international break.

The two giants of German football face off in the final Klassiker of the season at the start of April, with Thomas Tuchel replacing Julian Nagelsmann in Bayern’s dugout. The pair played out a spiky 2-2 draw in October but Bayern have home advantage next month and FiveThirtyEight give the Bavarians a 63% chance of collecting all three points on April Fool’s day, thereby climbing back atop the Bundesliga.

RB Leipzig, a resurgent team under Marco Rose but currently fifth in the actual standings, are the only other side deemed to have more than a negligible chance of winning the Bundesliga – although, that likelihood has been placed at an improbable 1%.

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Freiburg are actually above Leipzig in today’s table but the supercomputer predicts Christian Streich’s side will slip out of the top four by May, with Union Berlin given a 64% chance of qualifying for Champions League football just four years after winning promotion to the top flight.

At the other end of the table is where the mayhem really begins to commence. The bottom four are separated by just two points in the current standings and the gap isn’t expected to widen much in the intervening two months – however, the order could well change.

Stuttgart prop up the current division on 20 points but FiveThirtyEight’s model suggests they will be able to finish on a tally of 32 which would be enough to haul themselves into the relegation playoff spot.

Hertha Berlin currently occupy that slot but are set to tumble into the red. 777 Partners acquired a majority share of the club in March, adding the capital side to a portfolio which includes Serie A’s Genoa – who were relegated the same season in which 777 invested – and Sevilla, a staple of the Spanish top flight that are also on the brink of the drop.

Schalke are the other favourites to go down despite recording an eight-game unbeaten streak going into the March international break – although six of those matches ended in a share of the spoils.

Hoffenheim are expected to remain perched precariously above the maelstrom of the bottom three by May – with their hopes bolstered by a win over fellow strugglers Hertha just before the current hiatus after a run of two points from 14 games.

The minor detail of which blond, middling former player will patrol Bayern’s technical area is not baked into FiveThirtyEight’s model. Although, past precedent is on Tuchel’s side. During the club’s ten consecutive titles, Bayern have replaced their coach midway through two previous seasons.

Jupp Heynckes came in for his fourth spell at the helm in October 2017 after Carlo Ancelotti’s relaxed training methods didn’t impress Bayern’s demanding squad, steering the club to a breezy title victory by 21 clear points in the end.

Hansi Flick replaced Niko Kovac in November 2019, his first senior management position in 14 years. There were few signs of rust as Bayern ended the season with another European treble.

However, both those coaches had considerably more time than Tuchel to set Bayern on the right track. Bayern have not parted ways with a manager this late in the season since Louis van Gaal was ushered out in April 2011. However, by that point, there was little chance of Andries Joncker mounting a charge on Jurgen Klopp’s runaway Dortmund champions as Bayern finished a lowly third.

Nevertheless, Tuchel has proven to be adept at rapidly deciphering a system which will suit his new squad of players, sketching up the plans on the plane from Paris to London for the back-three formation which Chelsea used in his debut game against Wolves. That same setup carried the Blues to Champions League glory four months later.

With Bayern up against Manchester City – Tuchel’s vanquished victims in the 2021 final – in the competition’s quarter-finals next month, there’s every chance that the former Borussia Dortmund coach can lead his new side to success both abroad and domestically.

Bayern Munich have confirmed that they have parted ways with manager Julian Nagelsmann and that he will be succeeded by Thomas Tuchel.

90min confirmed on Thursday night that the 35-year-old was expected to be relieved of his duties before the return of club football.

Nagelsmann was quizzed about such news on his way back from a skiing trip, admitting he had not heard from Bayern regarding his job security.

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But after meeting with club officials on Friday, Nagelsmann was ‘released’ from his role at Bayern, with ex-Chelsea boss Tuchel stepping in.

In a statement, Bayern said: “FC Bayern München has released head coach Julian Nagelsmann. This decision was taken by CEO Oliver Kahn and board member for sport Hasan Salihamidžić in consultation with club president Herbert Hainer.

“Nagelsmann will be succeeded by Thomas Tuchel. Tuchel will receive a contract until 30 June 2025 and will supervise squad training for the first time on Monday.

“Along with Nagelsmann, assistant coaches Dino Toppmöller, Benjamin Glück and Xaver Zembrod have also been released.”

FC Bayern Munich is a storied institution with unwritten rules woven into the tapestry of the club’s trophy-laden history.

Alongside using the formal ‘Sie’ to address your superiors, smiling when forced into lederhosen at Oktoberfest and always winning the Bundesliga, perhaps the club need to confiscate any skis and poles upon arrival in Bavaria.

Julian Nagelsmann was in the Austrian alps when his family ski trip was soured with the news that he would no longer be the manager of the club he grew up supporting. Just a few months prior, Bayern’s captain Manuel Neuer broke his leg whizzing down the slopes after Germany had tumbled out of the World Cup group stage once again.

Going into the Qatar tournament, Bayern were four points clear at the top of the Bundesliga on the back of a ten-match winning run. The perennial German champions have dropped 12 points in 2023 yet remain within touching distance of league leaders Borussia Dortmund – who they face on 1 April – and are poised to compete in the quarter-finals of the DFB Pokal and the Champions League.

So, less than two years after Bayern paid a world-record €25m fee to secure Nagelsmann’s signature, why have they consigned his tenure to scrapheap with Thomas Tuchel set to take over?

Five days before Nagelsmann was ushered out of the back door, Bayern’s president Herbert Hainer offered little evidence that the 35-year-old was on the brink of the sack. “I think Julian has come a long way,” Hainer told the German publication Kicker.

“A top coach who also proved against Paris that he is tactically and strategically excellent at the highest European level. We recognised that with a five-year contract because we want to build something with him.”

Hainer referenced Bayern’s two-legged victory over Paris Saint-Germain in the Champions League round of 16, a convincing and composed triumph in which the Bavarians were comfortably superior for at least 160 of the tie’s 180 minutes – making his subsequent departure all the more bizarre. Bayern are the only side in this season’s Champions League to have won every match, defeating Inter, Barcelona and PSG while keeping seven clean sheets along the way.

Bayern followed up their European progression with a chaotic 5-3 win over Augsburg before skulking into the March international break on the back of a 2-1 reverse away to Bayer Leverkusen. It was the club’s third league defeat of the season, their second of the new year, but the manner of the loss was what proved most troublesome for the club’s top brass.

Only Pep Guardiola, Hansi Flick and Carlo Ancelotti averaged more Bundesliga points than Nagelsmann during their tenures but events on the pitch are not the only defining factor in his departure.

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Nagelsmann once famously opined: “30% of coaching is tactics, 70% social competence.” Unfortunately for the towering Bavarian, his personal relationships have become increasingly strained.

After Leverkusen’s Exequiel Palacios held his nerve to convert two penalties in last Sunday’s victory against Nagelsmann’s side, Bayern’s sporting director Hasan Salihamidzic seethed: “That’s not what Bayern is about. So little drive, mentality, assertiveness. I’ve seldom experienced that.”

This was a rare divergence from the public praise Salihamidzic has been keen to heap on the coach he decided to sign. However, Nagelsmann would not be the first manager to fall out with Bayern’s forthright sporting director. The deterioration in the relationship between Flick, Nagelsmann’s predecessor, and Salihamidzic ultimately hastened his departure for the German national team.

Nagelmann’s running spat with Neuer has been far more public. The Bayern skipper caused real controversy with an interview for The Athletic in February when he lamented the surprise departure of long-time goalkeeper coach Toni Tapalovic for “no reason that I could comprehend”, a decision which brought the veteran keeper to tears.

Nagelsmann never warmed to Neuer’s confidant Tapalovic and was expected to be behind his departure. The frost crackled across his words when Neuer – who is 16 months older than Nagelsmann – described his relationship with the manager: “I work with him in a professional manner. We were very straight with each other. He knows where I stand.”

It would be wrong to suggest that Nagelsmann lost the entirety or even the majority of the Bayern dressing room – just look at the shock of Joao Cancelo when confronted with the news while on international duty – but clearly some key figures won’t be brought to tears.

It all started so well. Back on the first weekend of August, Bayern lined up against freshly crowned Europa League champions Eintracht Frankfurt with a front four of Sadio Mane, Serge Gnabry, Jamal Musiala and Thomas Muller, producing fluid and fluent attacking play so sharp, the visiting backline needed to be bandaged up at the final whistle.

Across the first four games of the season, Bayern scored an outrageous 20 goals. However, that edge had already begun to blunt by October. Mane’s maiden season has been punctuated by injuries and half of his league goal tally came in August. The former Liverpool forward, brought in as the flexible replacement for Barcelona-bound Robert Lewandowski, has not scored since Halloween.

Unable to replicate the free-wheeling, striker-less front line which succeeded so well at Manchester City last season under the watch of one of his idols Guardiola, Nagelsmann turned to the only orthodox centre-forward left in the squad; Eric Maxim Choupo-Moting. The footballing punchline has morphed into a reliable poacher under Nagelsmann – who warrants credit for pivoting mid-season – but Bayern’s attack was not what it has been in recent seasons.

The Bavarians are creating fewer chances of lower quality, still registering the best expected goals (xG) rate in the Bundesliga but they have gone from racking up 2.5 xG per 90 last season to 2.0 this term – a 20% drop-off.

Choupo-Moting missed Bayern’s defeat to Leverkusen with back problems, underlining the worrisome reliance the team has developed for the former Stoke City striker.

Bayern have stricter managerial criteria than other super clubs. Tuchel, a Champions League-winning German speaker, with detailed knowledge of the Bundesliga who was out of contract, ticked all of the boxes.

How much longer the former Borussia Dortmund coach would have been available was also a factor in the proactive decision-making of Bayern’s hierarchy. With the summer break nearing, Bayern clearly felt they could not afford to watch Tuchel join another club.

15 years after he gave Nagelsmann his first job off the pitch, shifting the chronically injured centre-back from the treatment table to a scouting role at Augsburg, Tuchel is snatching the sacked coach’s dream role off him.