In case some of us didn’t know it already, the massive build up and interest in this game is telling us this is the biggest game of the season so far. Bayern Munich are definitely the form team in Europe this season, but if you take the whole year of 2015, then Arsenal come out on top and have claims on the most consistent team overall.
Arsene Wenger was keen to point out the areas where we have the better record than our German opponents. “We fight the whole season to be in the Champions League so [our aim is] not to go out. We want to be in every competition,” he said on Arsenal.com.
“In 2015 we are the team that has taken more points than everybody else, and we are still accused of being inconsistent. But in Europe it’s true we have been poor in our first two games -that is what we want to correct.
“We played well [against Manchester United]. But people didn’t give us credit to win 5-2 at Leicester where we had an outstanding performance.
“Physically, that was the highest performance of the season and I think we had not completely recovered against Olympiacos.
“But I think since the start of the season we are slowly moving up.
“If you look at our record in the Champions League, over 160 games nobody has a better percentage of winning than us. We want to win [the competition] but the obsession at the moment is to stay in it, not to win it.”
If we want to prove to everyone that those first two Group Games were nothing but a blip, an anomaly, a case of overconfidence – then there is no better way to do it than by beating Bayern Munich to set ourselves up for the knockout rounds. But first of all, let’s look at the Official Confirmed Team that Arsene Wenger is trusting to get the points:
Cech
Bellerin, Mertesacker, Koscielny, Monreal
Coquelin, Cazorla
Ramsey, Ozil, Alexis
Walcott
Subs: Macey, Gibbs, Chambers, Debuchy, Arteta, Oxlade-Chamberlain, Giroud
As is the norm nowadays, Walcott is preferred to start the match, and Cech comes in for the injured Ospina as we all knew.