Thomas Muller took a cheeky swipe at Arsenal after Serge Gnabry maintained his phenomenal record in London with a terrific double in Bayern Munich’s 3-0 win over Chelsea at Stamford Bridge. Frank Lampard’s young Chelsea team managed to keep Bayern at bay until half-time but the floodgates opened after the break and Gnabry opened the scoring in the 51st minute thanks to an exquisite cut back from Robert Lewandowski. Gnabry doubled his tally with a composed finish just three minutes later before Lewandowski’s strike put Bayern within touching distance of the Champions League quarter-finals. To add to Chelsea’s woes, Jorginho will be absent at the Allianz Arena after picking up a booking for dissent and Marcos Alonso’s red card – for striking Lewandowski with his arm – also rules him out of the second leg.
Lampard: Bayern’s levels ‘fantastic’ as Chelsea trounced at ho
But Tuesday evening undoubtedly belonged to Bayern and ex-Arsenal man Gnabry whose brace took him to 17 goals in 30 appearances in all competitions for Bayern this term.
Remarkably, all five of his Champions League goals (four against Tottenham and two versus Chelsea) have come in London this season – that’s the same number Alexandre Lacazette has managed in the capital this campaign.
After the game, Sky Germany asked Bayern forward Muller: ‘Serge Gnabry has scored in his last six games in London. That’s crazy, right?’
Muller replied: ‘Yeah, Arsenal are perhaps asking themselves that!
‘I’m happy he is scoring so much in London now and not five years ago, because if that were the case he probably wouldn’t be with us now.’
Gnabry insists Bayern cannot afford to rest on their laurels but a three-goal buffer gives them ‘confidence’ ahead of the second leg.
‘I certainly do [enjoy coming back to London]. I have a lot of friends here. A lot of them were in the stands tonight and I think they were giving me good power,’ the German told BT Sport.
‘Three goals should give us a lot of confidence. We need to be prepared for the second leg and we can’t take it serious enough. It’s still open but I think we have a good advantage.
‘I think we knew we had to be patient. We had the game under control in the first half I think we had a couple of chances with Lewa and Thomas and didn’t take them. But knowing we have to be patient and that we’d get our chances and in the end we took them.
‘We saw last season with Liverpool beating Barcelona, we know we have to be careful and focus.’
After Bayern’s thumping victory, Arsene Wenger explained that Gnabry’s tendency to look for the ‘easy way’ was why he failed to make the grade at Arsenal.
‘He has no real limitations it’s more how much does he want to suffer,’ the former Arsenal head coach said on beIN SPORTS.
‘Because he has pace, power, technical ability, he’s very intelligent, sometimes he looks for the easy way in football. That’s what was his problem. He lacked a bit.
‘I gave him to West Brom, it didn’t work out at all. In fairness I think we had an agreement with him but Bayern stole him away from Werder Bremen.
‘He’s a good player. He has individual ability and collective ability. We had an agreement with him but because he didn’t play at West Brom I let him go with the U21s in the summer with the German national team and he did very well of course.
‘We had prepared him for us to sign his new contract but then suddenly he wanted to go to Werder Bremen.
‘But it was not Werder Bremen that bought him it was Munich that bought him. Because six months or less than one year later he moved from Bremen to Bayern but it was a done deal before.
‘He was at the end of his contract and we thought that he would stay because he told he would stay.’
