Last season Bayern Munich finished an unprecedented fourth in the Bundesliga, a feat which meant no Champions League football for the 2007-8 season. Felix Magath's team struggled along up to Christmas trying to cope with injuries to key players Bastian Schweinsteiger and Lukas Podolski, among others.

Unsurprisingly, Magath's two-year tenure, in which he won German manager of the year for 2005, came to an end in January. The Bayern board took the decision to reinstate Ottmar Hitzfeld, who had a highly successful first term at the club between 1998-2004. Suddenly a Bayern title charge began to take shape but ultimately it was too little too late and the championship went to Stuttgart for the first time since 1991. However, the board convinced Hitzfeld to extend his stay at the Allianz Arena and he quickly busied himself in the transfer window.

For pretty much the whole season, Bayern were resigned to losing dynamic English midfielder Owen Hargreaves. His replacement was a piece of pure inspiration from Hitzfeld. Ze Roberto, the club's former left-sided player who had returned to Brazil, reinvented himself as a defensive midfielder at Santos FC to such an extent that he was brought back into the Bayern fold and has been a revelation at the heart of the Munich midfield.

'The phrase ''world class'' is bandied about rather liberally these days, but in Luca Toni and Miroslav Klose, Bayern do indeed have two of the best strikers in the world'

Another departure for the Premier League was Claudio Pizzaro. The Peruvian striker's pedigree in front of goal for Bayern was not bad but after he demanded a phenomenal pay increase, Karl-Heinz Rummenigge declared: "Anyone wishing to earn as much as Andriy Shevchenko had better start playing like Shevchenko."

Perhaps not the most appropriate comparison in recent years but the point was obvious for all to see. Indeed, Pizzaro's start to his Stamford Bridge career has hardly caused a ripple of interest and some believe it may not be long until his name joins those of Chris Sutton and Mateja Kezman on the 'those who failed to make it at Chelsea' list.

His release has been vindicated as Hitzfeld has brought in two world-class strikers. The phrase 'world class' is bandied about rather liberally these days but in Luca Toni and Miroslav Klose, Bayern do indeed have two of the best strikers in the world, as their pedigree suggests. Klose is a World Cup Golden Boot winner whilst Italian Toni became the first player in almost half a century to score 30 goals in a Serie A season. Both were named in the 2006 World Cup Dream Team. Add to that the World Cup's best young player Lukas Podolski and you have a strike force to be envied.