These days, the statisticians don’t just count the goals and cards in a Bundesliga fixture. Pass completion, possession percentages, crosses delivered and touches of the ball are just a few of the myriad facts and figures on offer. Friday’s restart clash between the champions and the 2009 Bundesliga winners threw up the usual fascinating haul. fcbayern.de has pored over the match stats and picked out the highlights.
Facts and stats from the Wolfsburg clash:
0 - Bayern have lost precisely none of their 14 home Bundesliga meetings with the Wolves. The nation’s most successful club has won 13 and drawn one of the games, scoring at least once in every match.
5 - Bastian Schweinsteiger scored against Wolfsburg for the fifth time on Friday, making VfL easily the 26-year-old’s favourite opponents. Overall, it was Bastian’s 23rd goal in his 218th top flight appearance. It also saw him end the run of rotten luck which plagued him last term, when he hit the goal frame no fewer than seven times.
6 - Franck Ribéry roared back to form on Friday with six shots at goal and six assists for team-mates to fire at the target. That made the Frenchman the most dangerous player on view.
19 - Bayern have now opened a Bundesliga campaign at home on a Friday 26 times, winning on 19 occasions. Of the remaining matches, five ended in draws and just two were lost.
24 - Counting from last season, Bayern have now scored in 24 league matches in a row. The last time the men in red failed to find the target was fully ten months ago, in a goalless draw with VfB Stuttgart in October 2009.
39 - Edin Dzeko’s headed equaliser for Wolfsburg ended a long and successful run for the FCB defence. In the previous 39 Bundesliga fixtures, the Bavarians had not conceded from a corner.
63 percent of the possession, 52 percent of their challenges won, a shot count of 18-11, 16 crosses to the Wolves’ four, and a corner tally of 9-3 underline Bayern’s domination of the match against Wolfsburg.
100 - Daniel van Buyten had two reasons to celebrate on Friday. Not only did he and his team get off to a winning start, the Belgian made his 100th Bundesliga appearance for Bayern (13 goals).
107 +109 - Louis van Gaal’s twin holding midfielders again bossed the play. Mark van Bommel (109) and Schweinsteiger (107) led the way in touches of the ball on Friday night. By contrast, Wolfsburg’s best performers - Sascha Riether (49) and Dzeko (47) – played the ball less than half as often.
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