RB Leipzig scored 66 Bundesliga goals last season, and 29 of them came from three attacking contributors who are now gone or unavailable. Yan Diomande has left, while Christoph Baumgartner and Assan Ouédraogo are injured. That leaves the club trying to redistribute both goals and assists across a group that still needs to prove it can carry the load.
The production Leipzig must replace
The basic problem is blunt enough. Diomande, Baumgartner and Ouédraogo combined for 29 goals and 19 assists in 2025/26, which is a sizeable chunk of Leipzig's attack to replace at once. The club's own framing points to multiple options rather than a single saviour, with Martín Demichelis and Marcel Schäfer both selling a broader spread of contributors rather than one player taking over.
Schäfer's read on the new arrivals is encouraging. Of Brajan Gruda, he said: "He showed his quality and how good a fit he is to our game in his first months here. Brajan is technically good, creative, has good speed and enriches our attack with his abilities in the final third."
Gruda's loan spell backs that up. He scored 3 goals and recorded 3 assists in 13 games at Leipzig, and his recent form ended on back-to-back 7.0 ratings in his last two appearances. That is the clearest case for believing Leipzig can find some of the missing creation inside the squad.
Antonio Nusa adds a different profile. He scored 1 goal in 6 World Cup appearances for Norway over the summer, and he said, "I'm not the same person I was two months ago when we set off for America. This summer helped me mature as a person." That does not guarantee more end product, but it does suggest a winger who comes back with a better sense of the stage.
Johan Bakayoko is the other obvious wide option. Schäfer described him as bringing "power, explosiveness, speed and goal threat" on the right wing. His first Bundesliga season produced only 2 goals in 20 league appearances, with just 8 starts, so Leipzig are still waiting to see what he looks like with more consistent usage.
Rômulo's finish and Leipzig's wider bet
If Leipzig are trying to spread the burden, Rômulo looks like the closest thing to a centre-forward reference point. Schäfer said he offers "a strong physique, clean technique and an eye for goal" and can play "as a classic number nine." He scored 9 goals and registered 3 assists in his debut Bundesliga season, which gives the attack a proper finisher if the service improves around him.
That is the sensible reading of Leipzig's summer. They are not replacing one player with one player. They are trying to turn a lost 29-goal, 19-assist block into something more balanced, with Gruda and Nusa as creators, Bakayoko as a wider threat and Rômulo as the most natural scorer in the group.
Leipzig won 3 of their last 5 Bundesliga matches, but the sequence also included two heavy 4-1 defeats, which tells you the attack still swings between useful and unstable. The new season will show whether this mix can smooth that out, starting with how much Gruda and Nusa can feed Rômulo in the early weeks.
Written by Jack Mercer with AI-assisted research, cross-checked against 1 outlet. How we work →
