I'd also trust a Piqué-Bartra pairing more than Matthieu.
Nothing against the frenchmen, but he doesn't give me nearly enough tranquility going on against Bayern.
Why? Aside from sympathy reasons there's no reason to suggest that Bartra would do better than Mathieu. Passing stat-wise there's also no sign that Mathieu is considerably worse than Pique or Mascherano. In fact, passing accuracy is pretty much on par.
Kind of proves my point about people being ungrateful with Mathieu's contribution and downplaying them too much. We would be trailing behind Real Madrid in the league since Mathieu won us 4 points, while doing a solid enough job defensively. Whereas Mascherano has never scored for us in his career. Don't remember Mathieu giving up a vital goal as well.
As StarLord says choosing between Mathieu and Mascherano is going to be a compromise. I personally prefer the added height and set piece threat he brings, combined with the fact that Bayern do like to cross the ball to create scoring chances. Lewandowski, Müller and Schweinsteiger running from deep can be aerial threats we should be wary of.
And since Pep keeps the ball, I except possession stats to be fairly equal between both teams, which means our defence will have to do more organised (box) defending, whereas normally most we do in a match is defending in transition phases. Mascherano excels in the latter part, but not very much in the first.
