Everyone started panicking when Arsenal drew Bayern Munich in the first knockout round of the Champions League, and the pessimism was only increased when the Gunners lost to Everton this week, but the fact is that we are still a great team, in fact much stronger than anyother time we have played Bayern Munich.
Even Arjen Robben is well aware that Arsenal are a danger to the Bundesliga Champions. We’ve played them a few times over the last few years and always won — we always got through to the next round — but maybe this one will be the toughest one so far,” Robben said.
“For us, it’s very important that we’re at a 100 percent after the winter break when we play them. For them, the pressure is to make it to the quarterfinal for the first time in many years. Our target is always the final. But this draw doesn’t make it easy [for either team.]”
And the Dutchman has every reason to worry! In the past, Bayern Munich have usually been totally dominant in the German League and could afford to rest players ahead of playing Arsenal, but this year they are only joint top with Leipzig, and those two teams are only six points ahead of the chasing pack.
Munich have lost to Dortmund in the Bundesliga and drawn against many much lesser teams. They have also been beaten by Atletico Madrid and Rostov in the Champions League already, which is why they only finished second in the Qualifying Group while we finished top.
Munich are far from the scary proposition they were when we last met them, in fact I think they had won every league game until they played us last time, and we still managed to beat them once!
Its certainly good to know they are feeling vulnerable this time around, and we should be more confident we can beat them too, especially with the second game being at the Emirates….
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