Arsenal's Champions League blueprint has a major flaw that Bayern can expose

Bayern Munich and Arsenal share a status as champions of their country and an ambition to be champions of Europe. Their managers were two of Pep Guardiola's lieutenants, as his captain and assistant respectively at Manchester City.

Some may say they learnt different lessons. Arsenal go to the Allianz Arenaafter a win at Nottingham Forest in which they had a lone shot on target.

Bayern had 17 in their weekend win over RB Leipzig and, while it is both lazy and easy to dismiss their domestic opposition as relative minnows, the reality is they walloped the team who finished third in the Bundesliga last year. Bayern have six goals in their last match, Arsenal six in their last four.

The counter-argument, of course, is that Arsenal have the best defence in Europe, the team who only conceded seven goals in 15 Champions League games last season, the only side to start the current campaign with consecutive clean sheets. By way of comparison, Bayern were breached three times by the Norwegian newcomers Viking last week.

Whether or not it is merely a quirk of the fixture list, this midweek features superpower summits, games between arguably the four likeliest sides to win the competition - though Real Madrid may disagree with that - in Paris Saint-Germain against Barcelona and Bayern hosting Arsenal. Arsenal can look the anomalies among them.

Each of the other three can make a case to have the best attack on the continent. Bayern's is supported by the statistics.

Last season, they got a record 122 Bundesliga goals, bettered only by the Torino team of 1947-48 in a top-five European league. It was 51 more than Arsenal scored in winning the Premier League.

In all competitions, Harry Kane got 61 himself. In all, Michael Olise got 22 goals and 28 assists.

But the sense these sides were playing very different versions of the same sport was underlined in May's Champions League semi-finals. Bayern went to the Parc des Princes and, with Paris Saint-Germain, contributed to a classic.