Bayern crush Dortmund

Bayern Munich 5-1 Borussia Dortmund

(Müller 26', 35', Lewandowski 46', 58', Götze 66' - Aubameyang 36')

Having adjusted his starting eleven for the latest edition of the Bundesliga's premier fixture, with Sven Bender in the back-four and Gonzalo Castro playing instead of Marco Reus, Thomas Tuchel saw his side make a good early impression, with Shinji Kagawa, Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang and Henrikh Mkhitaryan disrupting Bayern's rhythm with some extremely high pressing.

However after 26 minutes, Jerome Boateng supplied something we don't see often from Bayern, as he lasered a ball forward from deep for Thomas Müller. Roman Bürki attempted a Manuel Neuer-like sweeper-keeper clearance, but failed to reach his target, and the ruthless Müller put the hosts in front.

Pep Guardiola's men grabbed the game by the throat after that, with Douglas Costa giving Sokratis a years supply of nightmares on the left, but after 35 minutes, it was Thiago penetrating into the Dortmund penalty area. Mkhitaryan brought him down with an errant knee, and the pitiless Müller did the honors from the spot, doubling the Bavarians' advantage.

Munich were hogging sixty percent of possession, and it seemed as though Bayern might kill the match right then and there. Instead, against the run of play and only a minute later, Dortmund found a lifeline. Castro sprinted away from his marker on the right and curled in an inch-perfect cross for Aubameyang, who snuck behind Javi Martinez. The resulting goal ran the Gabonese striker's record streak of scoring in every match at the beginning of a season to eight in total. The score at the break was a still respectable 2-1.

Then came Bayern

Much of the pre-match hype focused on the duel between Aubameyang and Robert Lewandowski, and Bayern's forward got his name on the score-sheet a mere twenty seconds into the second half.

Boateng glided another long ball forward, and Lewandowski split Dortmund's back four to latch on to it. Bürki cut an unhappy figure with a handball-esque leap into the air, and the Polish forward had calmly slotted in his eleventh goal of the season.

10 minutes later and Lewandowski found Mario Götze, who blew a sitter at the back-post. Nevertheless, any Dortmund hopes that those two players would take it easy on their former club were belied just three minutes later. Götze skipped away on the break and threaded in a perfect cross for Lewandowski, who was happy to complete his brace.

With 66 minutes gone, Thiago dribbled his way into the Dortmund area, where the ball eventually fell for Götze to make it 5-1. By that point, Dortmund had lost any semblance of the coherent shape they maintained at the start of the match.

Mkhitaryan and Januzaj drew good saves from Neuer in the final twenty minutes, but there was no way Dortmund were ever going to make a comeback from so far down. Lack of interest on Bayern's part was the main reason the scoreline stayed as it did. Goliath had made matchsticks of David.

To the rest of the league not to get any hopes up, he meant. The one-sided result against the Bundesliga's second-best team means that the reigning champs have a commanding seven point lead after only eight matchdays. A 26th German title for the Bavarians has already taken on an aura of inevitability.