Leverkusen are a couple of key injuries away from a potential collapse. Don’t have nowhere near the squad depth that Bayern have.
Actually, the exact opposite is true.
To illustrate how short of options Bayern are: Right now, their only RB (Mazraoui) is injured. His absence was foreseeable though, since he'd be playing the Afrika-Cup if fit. Currently, his position is played by Laimer who actually is Bayern's third CM behind Kimmich and Goretzka. Since they can't play every game, Bayern had to play 19 years old academy product Pavlovic who showed some promise but is nowhere near starting material right now. The other option is to play nominal left back Guerreiro. The only problem is: Guerreiro is one of only two relatively injury prone left backs. Over the last 5 Bundesliga seasons, Guerreiro has played around 2000 minutes on average, Davies had even less. But CM and FB aren't the only positions in which they are running out of players. With Kim, De Ligt and Upamecano, Bayern has only three CBs in their squad. One of which currently plays the Asia Championship. De Ligt just recently returned after being injured for months due to Tuchel having to rush him back from a minor injury at the start of the season. All this has led to Bayern at times only having four (!) players on the bench, all of them attackers (!), and almost having to play a CM as a CB in the prestigious match against Dortmund!
In contrast, Alonso in the first game after the break voluntarily rotated Tah out although our two other starting CBs are with their national teams. Our RB back up Arthur (Brazilian international) has been injured since the start of the season and Frimpong had to be subbed out in the first half against Leipzig due to an injury as well. In came Tella who immediately scored. Our best scorer this season, central striker Boniface, injured himself in Nigeria's training and is going to be absent until April but we can bring in Schick who scored 27 goals two seasons ago and scored a hattrick in his first start of the season, plus Hlozek who so far scored or assisted every 120 minutes in his Bundesliga career. Against Leipzog, Palacios was injured as well but for him, Andrich will be playing - who was a starter for us last season and already complained about too little playing time. Just like Stanisic - our RCB cover who we loaned out from Bayern. He plays now but will be benched again when Kossounou returns. Ironically, he left Bayern for us to get more playing time but Bayern are now in desperate need of a player like him. Our weakest position in terms of depth is probably LB - where Grimaldo plays who has been playing relentlessly for the past five years or so without major absences. His cover is our LCB Hincapie who is probably our best bench player who many thought would be a pillar stone for us this season.
So.. currently 7 players are missing, five of them starters, and we are still farther away from running out of options than Bayern. The only injury that would really concern me is Wirtz as his class is irreplaceable, IMO. But we are working to bring in another striker and another AM in the winter
