BY BAYERN MUNICH’S recent standards, it had been a low-key summer in the transfer market. An itinerant full-back, Massimo Oddo, came in late in the window, with a workmanlike midfielder, Tim Borowski, having joined in early June. Most attention centred on the new head coach, Jurgen Klinsmann, and almost as much on the mysterious new addition from Burma - a stately figure called Shakyamuni.

It was one of the four Buddha statues placed on the roof of Bayern’s training headquarters on Sabener Strasse shortly after Klinsmann took on his first job as a club coach. The explanation was that they had something to do with “spreading positive energy”, though a few weeks into the season the porcelain deities were removed. The devout Christian in Bayern’s midfield, Ze Roberto, said they did nothing for him, and as for those players more likely to frequent a Buddha Bar than visit a temple, they simply smirked. “No professional footballer needs a Buddha,” said Mario Basler, once a playing colleague of Klinsmann’s at Bayern. “In my day, me and Effe [Stefan Effenberg] would have gone up and shot the things.”

In Basler and Effenberg’s day, Bayern were known as FC Hollywood and almost everybody liked to play Rambo. The Buddhas have not directly taken the blame for an irregular start to the season by the Bundesliga champions but they are seen as a symptom of a management style that imposes abstract theories on sceptical individuals. Klinsmann came into the Bayern job from California - where he had lived since retiring as a footballer - bringing with him a number of new-age gimmicks designed to change the atmosphere at the club and an 11-man back-up team.

The coach was, technically, starting from scratch. Klinsmann’s record in charge of senior teams consisted of seven competitive matches before this season, namely those where he led Germany - the hosts - to third place at the 2006 World Cup. In that brief time he established himself as dynamic. Those who knew him as a striker at Stuttgart, Bayern, Monaco, Inter Milan and Tottenham knew he would bring charisma to club management, while his capacity to delegate was proved by the success of his former assistant Joachim Loew as Germany’s coach.

Luring him to Bayern was a coup for the club but also a risk, given his limited experience. They lost their first important game under Klinsmann - the Super Cup, Germany’s Community Shield - then conceded three goals in a cup-tie against third division Rot-Weiss Erfurt. Klinsi’s rollercoaster had only entered its first plunge. Martin Jol’s Hamburg arrived for the league opener and drew 2-2. Then Werder Bremen came to the Allianz Arena a fortnight ago and walloped Bayern 5-2. Last week Bayern lost 1-0 at Hanover and yesterday they conceded two goals in the last six minutes at home to Bochum in a 3-3 draw which left them, embarrassingly, in 11th place.

That is some distance from par for a squad that won its league at a canter under Ottmar Hitzfeld in May and one that includes the centre-forwards of Italy, Luca Toni, and Germany, Miroslav Klose, plus France’s most exciting footballer, Franck Ribery, and enough back-up - Klinsmann suggests - to keep the stars all fresh and on their toes. Having named the Dutchman Mark van Bommel captain, Klinsmann left him on the bench against Hannover and Lyons.

The newspaper Bild has nicknamed Klinsmann Jurgen Klapptnix - Jurgen Nothing Works - but these are still early days and with four points from two Champions League games they are on course to reach the knockout stages. They fell behind against Lyons but recovered and the French team left grateful for their draw.

That a Spanish judge claimed to have telephone evidence that a Russian he is investigating had said one leg of last season’s Uefa Cup semi-final between Bayern and Zenit St Petersburg - the Russian club, eventual winners of the competition, won 4-0 – was fixed. Bayern deny it. Assuming they are innocent, it at least reminded fans of the odd embarrassing defeat before Klapptnix took over - and Shakyamuni watched training from above.