This was billed as a clash of two of the best teams in Europe and for most of a cold evening in north London it felt like it. An absorbing game which ebbed and flowed throughout saw Bayern Munich’s rising star Lennart Karl cancel out Jurriën Timber’s opening goal from a corner before Noni Madueke and Gabriel Martinelli sealed a deserved win for Mikel Arteta’s side to maintain their 100% record in the Champions League so far and go top of the table. A place in the knockout stages now seems a mere formality.
Harry Kane let it slip in the buildup to this match that scoring against Arsenal gives him “a bit more joy” than any other club. But the England striker barely had a sight of goal as a Bayern side that had also won their first four matches in the Champions League group stage were taught a lesson. Arteta resisted the temptation to make wholesale changes before Sunday’s top-of-the-table clash with Chelsea at Stamford Bridge. He opted to start Cristhian Mosquera in central defence rather than Piero Hincapié as Myles Lewis-Skelly came in at left-back, while there was a welcome return for the captain, Martin Ødegaard, on the bench.
Having made history as the youngest player in Champions League history on 4 November, Max Dowman was not involved after scoring twice in a 4-2 Uefa Youth League win over Bayern as, when the Gunners’ 13-year-old Luiz Munoz became the youngest player ever to feature in the junior competition. The German club have their wunderkind in the form of Karl, who became their youngest goalscorer in this competition last month. Such is the trust in the diminutive forward that he was deployed in the No 10 position alongside an attacking triumvirate that has scored 50 goals between them already this season.
