We look ahead to Tuesday’s Champions League quarter-final clash with our Arsenal vs Bayern Munich prediction and preview. Can the Gunners banish the ghosts of their chastening 5-1 defeats to the Bavarian giants?
Arsenal vs Bayern Munich Stats: The Quick Hits
- The Opta supercomputer gives Arsenal a 51.5% chance of winning Tuesday’s first leg against Bayern Munich, who are assigned a 24.1% likelihood of victory.
- Arsenal have lost their last three games against Bayern by the same 5-1 scoreline, the joint-biggest margin of defeat in their European history.
- Harry Kane has 14 goals in 19 appearances against Arsenal, only netting more against Leicester City (20) and Everton (16). His five goals at the Emirates Stadium are also the joint-most by a visiting player, alongside Diogo Jota and Jamie Vardy.
Match Preview
They may have required penalties, but Arsenal emerged victorious from a Champions League knockout tie for the first time since 2010 last month, edging out a stubborn Porto side to reach the quarter-finals. Having ended 14 years of pain in Europe’s premier club competition, Mikel Arteta is now looking to mastermind a route past Bayern Munich, who have caused the Gunners plenty of heartache in the past.
Arsenal have lost their last three games against Bayern 5-1, with each of those defeats coming in the Champions League. Having been thrashed in Bavaria in the group stage in 2015-16, the Gunners sunk to a humiliating 10-2 aggregate defeat against the Bundesliga giants in the last 16 the following season. Those matches account for three of the four instances in which Arsenal have lost by a four-goal margin in European competition, also going down 4-0 to Milan in 2011-12.
This Arsenal team, however, is a different beast. A mature performance saw them beat Brighton and Hove Albion 3-0 on Saturday, leapfrogging Liverpool to go top of the Premier League table. Bukayo Saka opened the scoring from the penalty spot, with a Kai Havertz tap-in and a cultured finish from Leandro Trossard adding some gloss to the scoreline after half-time.
Saka now has as many Premier League goals this season (14) as he managed in 2022-23, but his good form has not been limited to the domestic front. He has recorded a team-high seven goal involvements in the Champions League this term (three goals, four assists), the most managed by an Arsenal player in a single campaign since Alexis Sánchez in 2015-16 (eight – three goals, five assists).
Havertz, meanwhile, only has one goal in Europe this season but has played an integral role in leading Arsenal’s ferocious press. The Gunners have allowed their opponents just 9.4 passes per defensive action (PPDA) in the Champions League this season, with only Paris Saint-Germain permitting fewer (8.7) among the 32 teams involved in the competition proper.
Havertz alone has applied 374 high-intensity pressures in this edition of the tournament, with 70 of those coming in Arsenal’s second-leg triumph over Porto in the round of 16. No player remaining in the competition can match his overall tally.
Jurriën Timber is Arsenal’s only absentee as he works his way back from an anterior cruciate ligament injury, with the likes of Thomas Partey, Emile Smith Rowe and Takehiro Tomiyasu back in contention.
Despite their relative inexperience on the continental stage, Arsenal are viewed by many as favourites for this tie, with Bayern in a state of crisis.
They are 16 points behind Bayer Leverkusen – who need just one more win to seal their first top-flight title – in the Bundesliga following Saturday’s astonishing collapse against Heidenheim.
Goals from Harry Kane and Serge Gnabry gave Bayern a 2-0 half-time lead, but Kevin Sessa pulled one back before Tim Kleindienst’s double clinched a famous 3-2 win for the minnows, who became the first promoted team in Bundesliga history to overturn a two-goal deficit to beat Bayern.
That result led to suggestions outgoing coach Thomas Tuchel could even be relieved of his duties early, but sporting director Christoph Freund has said the former Chelsea boss will “100%” be in charge for Tuesday’s game.
This competition offers Tuchel his only chance to salvage some pride from a miserable season, and Bayern cannot allow the tie to run away from them in the first leg. They have lost their last two away games in the Champions League’s knockout stages, going down 3-0 at Manchester City and 1-0 to Lazio. They last lost three straight away matches in the competition’s knockout stages between 2009 and 2010, against Barcelona, Fiorentina and Manchester United.
Fortunately for Bayern, they have a player who relishes visiting the Emirates Stadium in former Tottenham star Kane. His five goals on the ground are a joint record for a visiting player alongside Diogo Jota and Jamie Vardy, while he has 14 goals in 19 total appearances against the Gunners, only netting more against Leicester City (20) and Everton (16).
Tuchel has doubts over several players ahead of Tuesday’s game, with Manuel Neuer, Kingsley Coman, Leroy Sané and Noussair Mazraoui all due to be assessed. Raphaël Guerreiro will be available after returning from a thigh injury on Saturday.
Arsenal vs Bayern Munich Head-to-Head
This will be the fifth campaign in which Arsenal and Bayern have met in the Champions League’s knockout stages, with the German side progressing on all four previous occasions, at the last-16 stage in 2004-05, 2012-13, 2013-14 and 2016-17.
Bayern have only lost one of their last six away games against English teams in the Champions League (four wins, one draw), with that defeat coming against City at the Etihad Stadium at this stage last season.
The Bavarian giants have played three games in London during that run, beating Arsenal, Tottenham and Chelsea by an aggregate score of 15-3.
Their most recent trip to the Emirates, in March 2017, saw them inflict Arsenal’s heaviest defeat at the stadium in any competition.
Laurent Koscielny was sent off with Arsenal 1-0 up early in the second half, before Robert Lewandowski, Arjen Robben, Douglas Costa and Arturo Vidal (twice) netted for Bayern.
Recent Form
Arsenal are unbeaten in seven games across all competitions since their first-leg defeat to Porto in the last round, recording six wins and playing out a goalless draw with Man City.
Their 1-0 second-leg victory over Porto ended a run of five straight home defeats in the Champions League’s knockout stages.
The last time they won more than one home knockout game in a single campaign was in 2008-09, when they beat Roma and Villarreal en route to the semi-finals, eventually going out to Manchester United.
The Gunners have only won two of their previous seven European Cup/Champions League quarter-final ties, though this is their first appearance in the last eight since 2009-10, when they lost 6-3 on aggregate to Pep Guardiola’s Barcelona.
Bayern, meanwhile, have suffered three straight quarter-final exits since winning their last European crown in 2019-20. Tuchel’s side have lost back-to-back games, going down 2-0 to Borussia Dortmund prior to Saturday’s collapse. They could suffer three straight defeats for the second time in under two months, also enduring such a run in February – which included a 1-0 loss to Lazio in the Champions League.
Opta Power Rankings
The Opta Power Rankings are a global team ranking system that assigns an ability score to over 13,000 domestic football teams on a scale between zero and 100, where zero is the worst-ranked team in the world and 100 is the best team in the world.
Ahead of kick-off on Tuesday night, here is the Opta Power Ranking for both sides.
Arsenal vs Bayern Munich Predicted Lineups
Arsenal vs Bayern Munich Prediction
Arsenal entered their last Champions League tie with Bayern in 2017 as underdogs, but the tables have turned ahead of Tuesday’s matchup.
Of 10,000 match simulations conducted by the Opta supercomputer ahead of kick-off, Arsenal won 51.5%, with Bayern victorious in just 24.1% of scenarios and 24.4% finishing level.
The supercomputer views this tie as the most difficult to call of the four quarter-final pairings, with Arsenal given a 56.9% chance of progressing to Bayern’s 43.1%.
Arsenal vs Bayern Munich UCL Squads
Arsenal: Aaron Ramsdale, David Raya, Karl Hein, William Saliba, Ben White, Gabriel, Jurriën Timber, Jakub Kiwior, Cédric Soares, Takehiro Tomiyasu, Oleksandr Zinchenko, Thomas Partey, Martin Ødegaard, Leandro Trossard, Jorginho, Fábio Vieira, Mohamed Elneny, Kai Havertz, Declan Rice, Myles Lewis-Skelly, Ethan Nwaneri, Bukayo Saka, Gabriel Jesus, Emile Smith Rowe, Gabriel Martinelli, Eddie Nketiah, Reiss Nelson.
Head coach: Mikel Arteta
Bayern Munich: Manuel Neuer, Daniel Peretz, Sven Ulreich, Dayot Upamecano, Kim Min-jae, Matthijs de Ligt, Eric Dier, Bouna Sarr, Raphaël Guerreiro, Sacha Boey, Tarek Buchmann, Noussair Mazraoui, Joshua Kimmich, Leon Goretzka, Leroy Sané, Eric Maxim Choupo-Moting, Alphonso Davies, Konrad Laimer, Jamal Musiala, Serge Gnabry, Harry Kane, Kingsley Coman, Bryan Zaragoza, Thomas Müller, Mathys Tel.
Head Coach: Thomas Tuchel
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