Europe’s best defence meets the continent’s most feared attack in the UEFA Champions League on Wednesday. We look ahead to the game with our Arsenal vs Bayern Munich prediction and preview.
Arsenal vs Bayern Munich: The Key Stats
The Opta supercomputer makes Arsenal favourites for Wednesday’s game, assigning them a 44.9% chance of victory over Bayern Munich.
Arsenal are the only team yet to concede a goal in the UEFA Champions League this season, while Bayern have scored the joint-most, netting 14 times in four games.
Harry Kane has scored 15 goals in 21 career appearances against Arsenal, including six goals in 10 games against them at the Emirates Stadium – the most of any visiting player at the ground.
One perk of the altered UEFA Champions League format introduced last season is more regular meetings between Europe’s top sides, and fans have a heavyweight tussle to look forward to on Wednesday.
Opta’s Power Rankings currently rate Arsenal and Bayern Munich as the top two teams in global club football, and they are also the top two in the Champions League standings after four matchdays, both with 12 points on the board and an identical goal difference of +11.
They face off at the Emirates Stadium on Matchday 5, and if any game can be described as a meeting between an immovable object and an irresistible force, it is this one.
Arsenal are the only team yet to concede a goal in the Champions League this season, while they have also been the top side for both expected goals against (1.94 xGA) and shots on target faced (7).
Arsenal expected goals against
Bayern, meanwhile, rank joint-first for goals in the competition, level with Paris Saint-Germain on 14, while their 12.3 expected goals (xG) through the first four matchdays cannot be matched by any other team.
Those statistics still stand up when adjusted for all competitions, too. Arsenal’s six goals conceded are the fewest of any team from Europe’s top five leagues in 2025-26, while they have also given up the fewest xGA (9.9). Bayern, meanwhile, lead the way for goals (64) and xG (52.5) by some distance.
Bayern Munich expected goals
But it was Arsenal that turned on the style on Sunday as they crushed rivals Tottenham to go six points clear at the top of the Premier League, with Eberechi Eze scoring the first north London derby hat-trick in the competition.
Mikel Arteta’s men are unbeaten in 15 games overall since losing to Liverpool in August, winning 13 and drawing two. In the Champions League, they have won their last eight group- or league-stage games by a combined 24-2 scoreline – that streak is already their longest such run in competition history.
The Gunners will again be without key centre-back Gabriel Magalhães, who has a thigh injury, though Viktor Gyökeres and Martin Ødegaard could be in contention to return after just missing out on Sunday’s derby, while Gabriel Martinelli was an unused substitute after recovering from a groin issue.
If Arsenal’s record in the early stages of the Champions League is impressive, Bayern’s is imperious.
Since a 3-0 loss to PSG in September 2017, the Bavarian giants have lost just three of their 52 Champions League group- or league-stage games (W45 D4), though all three defeats in that time have come away from home.
Vincent Kompany’s side have been rampant this season, winning 17 of their 18 games across all competitions, with the only exception being a 2-2 draw with Union Berlin before the international break.
They thumped Freiburg 6-2 on Saturday to ensure they topped the Bundesliga for a 43rd consecutive matchday, equalling their own record set between 1972 and 1973. Eze’s former Crystal Palace team-mate Michael Olise was the star of the show with two goals and three assists, the first instance of any player recording five goal involvements in a game in one of Europe’s top five leagues this season.
Youngster Lennart Karl, centre-back Dayot Upamecano and Chelsea loanee Nicolas Jackson were also on the scoresheet, as was Harry Kane.
Kane has scored 15 goals in 21 career appearances against Arsenal, including six goals in 10 games against them at the Emirates Stadium. Indeed, the former Spurs striker has netted more goals as a visiting player at the Emirates than anyone else.
Along with being the joint-leading scorers across the first four matchdays in the Champions League, Bayern have also hit the woodwork seven times – the most of any team. This is the joint-most a team have hit the woodwork in their first four games of a Champions League campaign on record (since 2003-04), after Barcelona in 2010-11 and Real Madrid in 2018-19.
Arsenal vs Bayern Munich Head-to-Head
Arsenal have endured some miserable matchups against Bayern over the years, including three consecutive 5-1 defeats in 2015-16 and 2016-17 under Arsène Wenger.
More recently, Bayern eliminated Arsenal at the quarter-final stage of the 2023-24 Champions League, with Joshua Kimmich scoring the only goal in the second leg as the Bundesliga giants triumphed 3-2 on aggregate.
Arsenal have faced Bayern more often than any other team in the Champions League, with Wednesday’s match set to be their 15th meeting in the competition. The Gunners are winless across the teams’ last five, drawing one and losing four since a 2-0 success in October 2015.
That is also the only time Arsenal have beaten Bayern in four previous meetings in the group- or league-stage of the Champions League.
Arsenal vs Bayern Munich Prediction
Despite Arsenal’s woeful head-to-head record against Bayern, Arteta’s hosts are favoured for victory by the Opta supercomputer.
They came out on top in 44.9% of our pre-match simulations, with Bayern’s win probability standing at 29.9% and the remaining 25.1% of projections finishing level.
Arsenal are also the supercomputer’s favourites to win the Champions League in our tournament predictions, with a 23% probability. Bayern are second-favourites at 16%.
The supercomputer is also backing the Gunners to top the league-phase standings, with a 42.5% chance, with Bayern behind them at 33.7%, though an away win for Kompany’s men would provide a major swing in those projections.
Arsenal vs Bayern Munich Predicted Lineups
Arsenal: David Raya, Jurriën Timber, William Saliba, Piero Hincapié, Riccardo Calafiori, Martín Zubimendi, Christian Nørgaard, Declan Rice, Bukayo Saka, Leandro Trossard, Mikel Merino.
Head coach: Mikel Arteta
Bayern Munich: Jonas Urbig, Konrad Laimer, Jonathan Tah, Dayot Upamecano, Josip Stanisic, Joshua Kimmich, Leon Goretzka, Lennart Karl, Harry Kane, Michael Olise, Nicolas Jackson.
Head coach: Vincent Kompany
Opta Power Rankings
The Opta Power Rankings are a global team ranking system. They assign an ability score to over 15,000 domestic football teams. This score is 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 in north London, here is the Opta Power Ranking for both sides.
UEFA Champions League Stats Opta
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