Vincent Kompany had warned after their completion of a record-pace Hinrunde of the Bundesliga season that Bayern would have to “start completely from scratch” for the campaign’s second half. The message clearly got across. Poor RB Leipzig could not have known that his players would interpret that quite so literally.

On Wednesday Bayern had done the job in Köln; on Saturday in Leipzig, they gave the full manifestation of their brilliance as the evening went on. This became the numbers of the season’s first half made flesh. It is difficult to know what their hosts could have done much differently. Leipzig had been “clearly the better team” in the first 45, as Kompany had admitted. “It felt like they were twice as good as us.” His opposite number, Ole Werner, described his team’s first half as “the almost perfect performance”, and it was difficult to argue. Had Antonio Nusa, part of the excellent collective movement that led to Rômulo’s opener, taken one of the two good chances he missed in that time, then perhaps the discussion would be different.

Yet having gone into the break a goal down for the first time this season, Bayern were full of second-half hunger. The equaliser, Serge Gnabry’s 100th goal for the club, came after Christoph Baumgartner was pressed – actually, less pressed than swamped – by a trio of Bayern players some 35 yards from his own goal, with centre-back Dayot Upamecano the one to steal and send in Gnabry for his finish. With three goals in the last 10 minutes to garnish after Harry Kane had given them the lead, they were Darth Vader pushing his foot down on Obi-Wan Kenobi’s empty cape on the Death Star. Yes, they were really finished. Perhaps Leipzig should take that as a compliment.

Even Kompany was blown away by it. “My God, the lads delivered,” he said of that second-half maelstrom. Bayern were also, it was clear, indebted to Michael Olise, left out from the start and then introduced at the interval. “It was simply three games in six days. How else can I explain it?” Kompany had told Sky before the game, apparently almost embarrassed at his choices. It turned out to be a masterstroke. Olise ran the second half with three assists and a goal, the biggest impact by a Bayern substitute since Robert Lewandowski’s five goals in nine minutes against Wolfsburg in 2015.

The euphoria peaked with Olise’s goal, the fifth, swept in from a Jamal Musiala pass as he made a late comeback from injury as substitute, his season debut. Joshua Kimmich had punched the air as Musiala made his way smiling on to the field, which said it all. The possibilities are myriad. If Bayern were to carry on scoring at their current rate (71 in the league already), they would end the Bundesliga season with 134 goals. If Kane is a totem, Bayern are not unhealthily reliant on him. He has scored 30% of the team’s league goals but if we look at the Bundesliga’s top scorer table, he is joined in the top four by Olise and Luis Díaz.

Yet if the neutral, and perhaps even the home fans, marvelled at the jaw-dropping quality, Kompany praised his team’s “old-school mentality,” their physical efforts and commitment to nailing the basics of press and harry. Manuel Neuer, plainly at fault for the Linton Maina goal that put Köln in front on Wednesday, pulled off a sensational one-handed save to stop Yan Diomandé making it 2-2. This is a team which is not just sublime but locked in. As so often under Kompany, they give their opponents no room to breathe.

And this is what made their dismantling of Leipzig. The combination of excellence and relentlessness made the result. Werner reflected that his team had been “in it for 80 minutes,” but Bayern made them flinch, made them overcommit, and then feasted on them. Kompany asked his team for a second day one, and he got it. This Bayern are ready for anything.

Talking points

• We have the first sacking of 2026, with Eintracht Frankfurt moving on from coach Dino Toppmöller despite Ansgar Knauff’s stoppage-time equaliser nicking a draw at Werder Bremen (instructively, the goal was barely celebrated). Had it happened a few weeks back some might argue that Eintracht were in the same boat as Leipzig on Saturday, driven to distraction by Bayern’s brilliance and demanding the impossible of themselves. Yet just as sporting director Markus Krösche had warned at Christmas of the team becoming a victim of their own heightened standards over the last few years, he eventually snapped at Toppmöller’s inability to fix their defensive problems after a third successive game in the calendar year that they led in and failed to capitalise on. “It’s always the same mistakes,” he bemoaned immediately after the game in Bremen, “for 17 or 18 games now. We’re conceding incredibly easy goals, we’re far too hectic in possession, and we lack structure.”

• It was a pretty damning assessment, but not entirely unfair. They have conceded a barely believable 39 goals already, the division’s joint worst with Heidenheim, and that’s without mentioning the 16 shipped in six Champions League fixtures to date. It’s sad, with Toppmöller having made Die Adler a hugely attractive and successful side, something acknowledged by the club extending his contract in May last year. But the other side effect of Bayern’s extraordinary dominance is an open, unholy scrap for the Champions League places and with third and fourth (at least) begging to be taken, Krösche will feel Frankfurt cannot afford to miss out.

• A possible beneficiary, however, of the Bayern/the rest schism in the Bundesliga is Borussia Dortmund, who snuck a 3-2 home win over St Pauli thanks to Emre Can’s penalty in the fifth minute of added time – having let a two-goal advantage slip against the now-bottom team for the second time this season. BVB currently have a six-point cushion in second despite rarely impressing. For the visitors’ Ricky-Jade Jones it was an elation-to-heartbreak arc; the ex-Peterborough man had produced a stylish finish to make it 2-2 before conceding the penalty at the end, catching Maxi Beier right on the line as he exited the area.

• Leverkusen are not quite in the Eintracht Frankfurt category, with Kasper Hjulmand’s work so far making them competitive compared to the mess left by Erik ten Hag’s brief reign. Yet defeat by Hoffenheim, via Wouter Burger’s early goal, was costly and led to a second successive loss, which was also a fourth defeat in six Bundesliga games. As so often, the captain Robert Andrich gave an insight to what the issue might be, with the summer of upheaval still not totally behind them. “We need to be clear as a team,” he told ZDF. “What kind of game do we want to play? It’s pointless if four players play one style and three play another.”

• After their brief brush with success against Bayern, Köln won the game that they really needed to, coming from a goal down to beat Mainz and keep Urs Fischer’s team at arm’s length. They looked leggy in the first half despite changes by Lukas Kwasniok aimed at freshening up after their midweek efforts, but two goals from substitute Ragnar Ache turned the game around and served up “three points with a certain sense of relief,” as Kwasniok put it.