Here we are boys and girls. The big one tonight. It’s Bayern Munich at the Emirates and as soon as the draw was made a few weeks back, we all collectively took an intake of breath as Arsenal fans, because we all know the history of playing them in this competition.

It ain’t great.

12 games, three wins, two draws and seven defeats. And in the last three games it’s been three ‘Ls’ and an aggregate score of 15 – 3 to the Germans. This is a German side who are serial winners and who have won their domestic league for the last 11 times. This season is seen as an absolute disaster for them because they’ve come up against a Leverkusen who are unbeaten this season, but they will still most likely finish second.

And in this season of woe they are having, they have still scored 80 goals and average 2.86 goals per game. They have a striker in Harry Kane who is nine goals away from equally Lewandowski’s 41 goals in one season record and when you start to look at their domestic numbers, they are still performing at a pretty high rate.

The talk of this Bayern Munich being a bit of a hot mess are slightly exaggerated methinks.

Don’t get me wrong, they are not the force they perhaps were three or four seasons ago and they have a few players like Neuer and Muller who they rely on even though they are in the autumn of their careers, but they will come to the Emirates this evening full of belief that they can still very much win this competition and we should be very wary of that.

The Champions League hits differently, as we know, following our last couple of games against a Porto team that really we should have been able to overcome a lot easier than we did if you play the ‘on paper’ game. And when you look at how we are playing, how Bayern have just been beaten by Heidenheim at the weekend 3-2 and by the fact that they have a current incumbent manager who will soon be exiting the building in the summer, it does feel like that instability could be an advantage for us. After all, we have a team who are looking unified, who have the stability in the club and the manager that is making us look pretty good right now and a team who have just got back from a very tricky away game to Brighton who we dispatched with some relative ease in the end. But I carry the battle scars of previous defeats to Bayern and I am well aware of our record against the current German Champions.

In some way I hope that Bayern come to us and try to play their game of high pressing and ball retention, because we have shown that we can go toe-to-toe with teams that want to come at us and if it means there is more space to operate for the likes of Havertz and Odegaard, then I think we could get some joy. Bayern have the inevitable threat of the likes of Kane, Gnabry, Sane and Muisala and they will stress our team more than anyone has done defensively so far in 2024 I reckon.

The noises are that Bayern will play with De Light and Dier at the back and if that is the case then we have to hope that we have a mobile front three that are going to move them around. Alphonso Davies will play left wing back and if he’s venturing forward there could be opportunities for White and Saka to combine. If you’re not reading between the lines on some of my thoughts already, I’ll spell it out just to make sure: I think we’re going to get chances tonight. Good chances. Whether or not we take them will be the story of the game, but I think this might just be quite an entertaining Champions League match with two teams who want to land big blows on each other.

In terms of what team we line up with, I have a feeling it might be:

Raya

White   –   Saliba   –   Gabriel   –   Kiwior

Jorginho

Odegaard   –   Rice

Saka   –   Havertz   –   Jesus

I would have gone for Martinelli wide left but Gabby Jesus loves the Champions league and Martinelli hasn’t started in a while, so chucking him in for such a big game feels like a big ask. The other major question mark I had was whether it should be Zinchenko or Kiwior and I opted for the Polish international mainly because of that extra defensive stability he offers. Bayern will play with either Gnabry or Sane and those two are pacey wide forwards who will be able to exploit space behind Zinchenko if he ventures forward, so I’m thinking the Pole gives a little more coverage. Of course I’m not 100% sure whether or not Arteta will be focused more on ball control in possession and if that is the case then having both Jorginho and Zinchenko on the pitch might be his priority.

But whatever Arteta decides to do, we have options from the bench and that is positive too. If he plays Zinchenko and we can control this match and be ahead with 20 – 30 minutes to go, then either Tomiyasu or Kiwior can get on the pitch to sure things up. Alternatively, if we want to see if we can stress Kimmich a little more at right back then we can give Martinelli a run out for the last half an hour or so. There’s also the possibility of bringing in the vertical passing and range of Partey too, so it feels like we’re in a good shape. Will that be enough to overcome Bayern this evening? We have to hope so.

I’ve seen plenty of talk about how we need to be bagging a ton of goals this evening so we have to take a big lead back to the Allianz next week. I get it, I’d love it, but I don’t think we need to go gung-ho. This Arsenal side has proven how strong it is defensively and so for me I think patience is the aim of the game both this evening and when we play away from home. We can’t afford to open up this game and turn it in to a basketball match; we are at home, we have a full house of Arsenal fans, we are the ones who want to control the narrative, so let’s go do that and see if we can put more misery on this Bayern team. We own them that.

Back tomorrow with some post match mumblings as always. Fingers crossed it’s a happy one.