The Gunners were undone again after going down to 10 men
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Second half goals from Toni Kroos and Thomas Muller was enough to give Bayern Munich a 0-2 victory over Arsenal in the Champions League last-16.
It was exactly a year to the day since the Germans had beaten Arsene Wenger’s men 1-3 at the Emirates Stadium at the same stage of the competition and they were no less ruthless this time round.
The Gunners started strongly though and a Bayern defence that had only conceded 17 goals all season looked shaky when up against the hosts’ attack.
Then in the 11th minute Mesut Ozil did well to break away from Jerome Boateng in the box and the defender brought the 25-year-old down.
Ozil stepped up to take the resulting penalty, but a tame effort from the attacking midfielder was easily saved by the German’s former Schalke 04 team-mate Manuel Neuer.
The Emirates was silenced by the effort from the £42.4m man and Bayern took the initiative to get back into the game and when Arjen Robben broke into the box the whole tie was turned upside down.
Nacho Monreal – who had come on for the injured Kieran Gibbs – let the Dutchman get away and when Wojciech Szczesny came storming out to challenge Robben, the winger knocked the ball away and was clattered by the goalkeeper.
The referee had no choice but to send the Poland international off and Wenger was forced to make a second change of the night before half-time, bringing Lukasz Fabianski on for Santi Cazorla.
However, for the second time in the match a spot kick was missed as David Alaba hit the post and the two sides went in at the break with the score still at 0-0.
Pep Guardiola swapped Boateng for Rafinha at half-time, with Javi Martinez dropping into central defence and Bayern then began to turn the screws.
Kroos eventually made the breakthrough with a fine curling effort into the top corner, but the home side realised a 0-1 deficit was not a bad scoreline to take to the Allianz Arena.
Yet despite some resolute defending Muller made things extremely difficult for Wenger’s side in the second leg by nodding home a header two minutes from time.
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