Bayern’s Champions League odds shift significantly after Arsenal defeat

Bayern Munich’s hot unbeaten streak came to an end at the hands of Mikel Arteta’s in-form Arsenal outfit on Wednesday night.

The Gunners secured a 3-1 win over the Bundesliga champions in the Champions League league phase.

Lennart Karl had appeared to provide some hope of a potential upset in London, equalising before the half-time break.

However, subsequent efforts from Noni Madueke and Gabriel Martinelli ensured that the hosts took the lion’s share of the three points.

Are Bayern still favourites to win the Champions League?

Bayern are joint favourites to win the Champions League according to Betway’s Champions League odds.

* Arsenal and Bayern’s Champions League odds for the 2025/26 season

There is, of course, still plenty of time left for the odds to change further ahead of the knockout rounds.

At present, FC Bayern are comfortably sailing towards a top-eight finish, provided they can also overcome upcoming opponents Sporting CP, Union St-Gilloise and PSV.

This would grant them immediate passage through to the last 16.

Vincent Kompany knows what went wrong vs Arsenal

Speaking after the 90 minutes, Bayern boss Vincent Kompany spoke in glowing terms of the threat Arsenal posed in London.

“The first half, it felt like to me [that] we could edge it,” the Belgian head coach told the press.

“You can’t keep a team like Arsenal without threat for an entire game, but I felt we had many reasons to go back in at half-time and think, ‘Okay, if we come out second half and improve a few things, we can edge it and bring it home’.”

Kompany added: “They came out with more purpose, more sharpness on the simple things in the game.

“Of course, they’ve always got the set plays to shift momentum. They use it also very well to control the momentum of a game.

“But at the same time, the things we did better in the first-half, we just allowed them to gain control of too many phases of play.”

Arsenal’s set pieces are a cheat code

Bayern Munich can’t have too many complaints as far as the game went in open play.

Arsenal more than doubled the visitors’ xG threat from open play with a score of 1.32 to Bayern’s 0.58, according to BBC Sport metrics.

And then set pieces added an entirely different dimension to the hosts’ game that the Bavarians simply couldn’t cope with or match.

* Bayern and Arsenal’s stats from the 1-3 defeat in the Champions League (BBC Sport)

There’s a lot of figuring out Kompany will need to do in the event FC Bayern come up against Arsenal again in the knockout rounds.