After a Premier League slip-up, the Gunners will hope to battle UEFA Champions League demons from previous years on Wednesday. Look ahead with our Bayern Munich vs Arsenal prediction and preview.
Bayern Munich vs Arsenal Stats: The Quick Hits
- The Opta supercomputer struggled to split these two, with Bayern Munich winning 39.4% of pre-match simulations and Arsenal succeeding in 33.7%.
- Harry Kane has scored 15 goals in 20 appearances against Arsenal, including one in the first leg last week.
- Arsenal have only won one of their six away games against Bayern in the UEFA Champions League (D1 L4).
Match Preview
Having suffered back-to-back 5-1 humiliations at the Allianz Arena, Arsenal will be aiming to put previous struggles behind them when they visit Bayern Munich for the second leg of their finely poised UEFA Champions League quarter-final meeting on Wednesday.
Arsenal suffered four-goal defeats away at the German giants in 2015 and 2017, as well as a 5-1 thrashing at home seven years ago, and a 2-2 draw at the Emirates Stadium last week did little to atone for those troubles.
Bukayo Saka opened the scoring but Leandro Trossard’s 76th-minute strike was required to salvage a draw after Serge Gnabry’s leveller and Harry Kane’s penalty had Thomas Tuchel’s side in the ascendancy.
Controversy was plentiful in the first quarter-final meeting, too, as replays left Tuchel incensed when Gabriel Magalhães picked up David Raya’s pass from a goal-kick inside the Arsenal area, with the Brazilian seemingly not realising play had restarted. The hosts also wanted a penalty when Saka went down over Manuel Neuer’s leg late on, but no spot-kick was awarded in the second half of a gripping opening leg, and that leaves it all to play for in Munich.
Bayern will be looking to qualify for the Champions League semi-finals for the 13th time, while Arsenal have managed to do so just twice before. Since the Gunners reached the semi-final for the last time in 2008-09, the Bundesliga giants have progressed on eight separate occasions in UEFA’s top club tournament.
Yet history will count for little as Mikel Arteta’s Premier League title contenders aim to write their next chapter, armed with a youthful and promising attack that could give any European rival a run for their money.
Martin Ødegaard created five chances in the first leg against Bayern, the most by an Arsenal player in a UCL knockout game since Cesc Fàbregas in February 2010 (five v Porto). Meanwhile, Saka has been directly involved in eight goals in the Champions League this season (four goals, four assists), the most ever by an English player in their debut campaign in the competition.
Only Thierry Henry has registered more combined goals and assists in a single edition of the Champions League for Arsenal (10 in 2002-03 and 11 in 2003-04), and Saka will head to Germany with a point to prove. The England winger looked like he would snatch a last-gasp winner in the first leg but went down in the box when one-on-one with Neuer, failing to win a penalty for his efforts. Opinions were divided on whether it should have been a penalty, with some feeling it was Saka who initiated the contact with the German goalkeeper.
That exciting attacking pair has been aided by Arteta’s free-flowing possessional style, with Arsenal making the most passes that have broken the opposition’s defensive line in the Champions League this season (111). Ben White (16), Saka, Jakub Kiwior (both 11) and Ødegaard (10) have done so 10+ times, with four players achieving the feat the most for one team in this campaign.
However, Bayern have attacking riches in abundance – and plenty of experience to go with that. Thomas Müller may not start Wednesday’s game but could make his 150th appearance in the competition for Bayern. He would become just the third player to reach this milestone for a Champions League team, after Xavi with Barcelona (151) and Iker Casillas with Real Madrid (150).
One forward certain to be in the lineup from the start, though, is Harry Kane. Arteta’s former north London nemesis has scored 15 goals in 20 appearances against Arsenal, including one in the first leg last week after Leroy Sané won a penalty at the Emirates.
Another landmark will likely be in the sights of Kane, who could become just the fourth player to score in both legs of a Champions League knockout tie against Arsenal; he would join Barcelona’s Lionel Messi (2015-16), Bayern’s Robert Lewandowski and Arjen Robben (both 2016-17) with a goal on Wednesday.
Arsenal will, at least, not have to worry about their former winger Gnabry, who is set for a spell out injured after a hamstring strain. The German forward missed Saturday’s 2-0 Bundesliga win over Köln, joining Tarek Buchmann, Bouna Sarr and Sacha Boey in the treatment room.
As for Arteta’s lineup, Jurriën Timber remains the only long-term absentee in defence, meaning Arsenal will likely start with Raya, White, Gabriel, William Saliba and one of Oleksandr Zinchenko and Kiwior at the back.
However, Arteta may have some cause for concern after Ødegaard limped off and was “unable to continue” in Sunday’s 2-0 defeat to Aston Villa that dented Arsenal’s Premier League title hopes.
Tuchel is looking to qualify for a Champions League semi-final with a third different team, having previously done so with both Paris Saint-Germain and Chelsea, before he departs Bayern at the end of this season. The only manager to do so with more than three different sides in the competition is José Mourinho (Porto, Chelsea, Inter and Real Madrid), and Tuchel will fancy his chances considering Bayern’s recent record at this stage.
Bayern have only failed to progress from one of their previous 18 two-legged ties in the Champions League knockout stages when avoiding defeat in the first leg, against Liverpool in the 2018-19 last 16.
Bayern Munich vs Arsenal Head-to-Head
Arsenal have lost on each of their most recent three trips to face German sides in the Champions League, with the last two both ending in 5-1 defeats against Bayern (November 2015 and February 2017).
Along with those two humiliations marking their joint-heaviest away defeats in Europe, they are the only occasions in which Arsenal have conceded five goals away from home in any European competition.
It makes for concerning reading, too, considering Arsenal have only won one of their six UCL away games against Bayern (D1 L4). That lone victory came in March 2013 in the second leg of a last-16 tie (2-0) under Arsène Wenger.
Despite that win, Arsenal were still eliminated from the tournament after losing on away goals (3-3 on aggregate) before that rule was removed from the competition.
Recent Form
Goals from Raphaël Guerreiro and Müller gave Bayern a 2-0 win over FC Köln on Saturday, though they had to watch Bayer Leverkusen secure the Bundesliga title just a day later.
That was Bayern’s first win in four games in all competitions (D1 L2), and Tuchel’s side have lost as many games as they’ve won across their last 12 (W5 D2 L5).
Arsenal will come into this one with dented confidence, after Leon Bailey and Ollie Watkins scored late on Sunday for Unai Emery’s Aston Villa to damage Arteta’s Premier League title hopes. That was the Gunners’ first defeat in all competitions since their 1-0 loss at Porto in the first leg of their last-16 tie.
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 Wednesday night, here is the Opta Power Ranking for both sides.
Bayern Munich vs Arsenal Predicted Lineups
Bayern Munich vs Arsenal Prediction
The Opta supercomputer favours the hosts in this winner-takes-all clash at Allianz Arena as Bayern triumphed in 40.9% of 10,000 pre-match simulations, compared to an Arsenal victory in 33.2%.
A draw would send this last-eight meeting to extra time – and possibly penalties – with that result forecast in 25.9% of sims.
As for going deeper into the tournament, Arsenal are the fifth favourites to win the competition at 8.3% in Opta’s predictions, behind Manchester City (31.1%), Barcelona (18.4%), Real Madrid (15%) and Atlético Madrid (8.7%) at the time of writing.
Meanwhile, Bayern rank as the sixth most likely UCL winners at 7.7% as an entertaining duel awaits in Munich.
Bayern Munich v Arsenal UCL Squads
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
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
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