German football expert Raphael Honigstein says he is “more worried then hopeful” about Bayern Munich’s chances of beating Arsenal in the UEFA Champions League quarter-finals.
Bayern are in a poor run of form and could see Bayer Leverkusen win the Bundesliga title this weekend, with the Bavarian giants trailing them in second by 16 points.
It will be the first time Bayern haven’t won the title since 2012.
With the Bundesliga looking a foregone conclusion, the UEFA Champions League is Bayern’s final chance of winning silverware this season.
Honigstein believes Bayern are in a period where they have to “muddle through” until the end of the season, when he believes a squad overhaul may be necessary.
“Bayern, for all the problems in recent years, have always been able to win the Bundesliga,” he told TNT Sports.
“They’ve been able to paper over the cracks with results, domestically, to an extent, but this is different this year, the Champions League is all they’ve got to play for.
“And because results are so poor, [director of sport] Max Eberl has now started talking about making the top four as a new priority for the club, which is not something that you’ve heard from Bayern since, maybe 2011?
“So it is a pretty difficult moment for the whole club, especially with Thomas Tuchel leaving and no new manager having been found yet.
“This Arsenal game comes at either the worst possible time, or at the best, because they’ve got little to lose in a way, and maybe the size of the challenge will lead to one last hurrah. But I’m more worried then hopeful at this point.
“Performances are certainly not up to standard, they’re defensively so weak, there seems to be a real lack of resilience, which again, we already saw last season and maybe the season before.
“And it’s hard to explain, when you have players that are all internationals, who have won the Champions League and have performed really well at different clubs. It’s not easy to understand why it has come to this.
“Of course, the easy thing to say is to point at the manager and say it’s ultimately his fault or his responsibility for a team to play well.
“And I guess that is true, in some sense, but I think there’s a recognition that some of the problems have gone deeper and have to do with the squad composition. Maybe bigger change is necessary after winning so much domestically, maybe people are oversaturated subconsciously, and need a new challenge.
“These are things that will happen, but that will only happen in the summer. And now they have to muddle through with a squad and a manager who don’t seem to fit very well together.”
Honigstein believes that despite Bayern’s defensive frailties this season, they will look to be the team who dominates possession against Mikel Arteta’s in-form side.
“I don’t think we’ll see a negative or defensive formation,” he said. “I think Bayern will have to play the way they know how to play, which is to try and dominate the ball and be proactive.
“They tried that against Manchester City [in last season’s quarter-finals] and they did reasonably well, even though the result was bad. They created chances, and they’re going to try and do the same thing again, and try to survive in this first leg somehow.
“But it’s another reason why I think confidence is low, because a team that is in tune with itself that has the rhythm, that has belief in itself, they can change.
“But now with this Bayern team, you feel every time there’s a switch, or a small adjustment, it just creates more uncertainty.
“I think that’s why Tuchel will, even though his instinct might be to be more defensive, will refrain from making any big changes.
“When Tuchel has tried to change the formation, the 3-4-3 backfired badly against Leverkusen and that was one of the poorest games of the season and really cost them the league effectively.”