Bayern Munich go into the winter break top of the Bundesliga despite their players missing a total of 828 days through injury in the first half of the season -- a number only beaten by Hertha Berlin and Schalke.
Throughout 2015, Bayern Munich's injury woes have been one of the main stories in Germany. The champions had to cope without several key players during the run-in last season -- David Alaba, Franck Ribery and Arjen Robben being among those unavailable.
The injury crisis also led to a falling out between the club's long-serving doctor Hans-Wilhelm Muller-Wohlfahrt and coach Pep Guardiola, with the veteran doctor and his entire staff resigning after 38 years with the club.
Last week, kicker reported that Guardiola and Muller-Wohlfahrt's successor, Dr. Volker Braun, have also fallen out amid a new injury crisis. Robben, Douglas Costa, Alaba, Mario Gotze, Medhi Benatia, Holger Badstuber and Ribery have all been sidelined during the first half of the season.
The paper cited it as one of the reasons for Guardiola's decision to leave Bayern at the end of the season, but addressing the press prior to Sunday's confirmation the Catalan said: "Sorry kicker. That's not true."
#BVB im Aufwind, #HSV auch: Erläuterungen und Analyse zur #Bundesliga-Verletzungstabelle gibt es wie immer im Blog. https://t.co/qN5BDSretU
- Fußballverletzungen (@fbinjuries) December 21, 2015
CEO Karl-Heinz Rummenigge also told Bild that rows with the club doctors did not lead to Guardiola leaving the club.
"Pep gets a bit emotional when players are injured," he said.
Bayern could name only three outfield players on their bench at the weekend, and now fusballverletzungen.com has released stats showing that Bayern players missed a total of 828 days already over this campaign.
United States forward Julian Green, and youngsters Gianluca Gaudino and Sinan Kurt, were included to arrive at a total squad size of 27 players. Every player thus missed an average of 30.67 days during the 17 games of the season.
Only Hertha's average of 33.07 and Schalke's 34.5 were worse, while Darmstadt remained essentially injury free following their promotion to the Bundesliga.