Bayern Munich vs 1. FC Köln Prediction, Betting Tips & Preview

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Haydn Cunningham Oct 14, 2015 @ 02:20 pm

Bayern Munich’s 100% start to the season was abruptly ended by Arsenal on Tuesday night as they were condemned to a 2-0 defeat to earn Pep Guardiola’s first defeat this season. Koln had a fantastic start to the season but lost recently to Hannover which was arguably their worst performance of the season.

Bayern Munich headed to England with 12 wins from 12 games, 40 goals scored and just 5 conceded. Munich have scored 5 times in a match on 4 occasions this season and were the favourites to put another massive dent in Arsenal’s Champions League qualification hopes in what was a must win game for them. Despite dominating possession and missing chance after chance, Munich were severely punished and dropped points for the first time. How Guardiola’s men react will be interesting particularly after a spell at the end of last season where they lost 4 games in a row. Munich have already massed a 7 point gap over 2^nd placed Borussia Dortmund and look unstoppable in the Bundesliga and rumours have been circulating that an unbeaten campaign could potentially be on the cards.

Koln carried the confidence boosting pre-season they had into the season with 7 points from 3 games. They’ve gone on to lose 3 of the next 6 Bundesliga games but are still looking pretty comfortable in 6^th; level with 3 other teams on 14 points. Koln will be bitterly disappointed with the defeat to Hannover at the weekend after Leon Andreasen handled the ball over the line from a corner that proved the decisive goal. It was a bitter pill for Koln to swallow and it ended their unbeaten home run this season. Anthony Modeste has been on fire this season but he couldn’t get the better of Hannover goalkeeper Ron-Robert Zieler who is in great form of late.

Munich unsurprisingly have a superior record against Koln like they do the majority of sides in the Bundesliga. They’ve won the past 4 meetings with the last fixture coming in February this year where Munich coasted to a 4-1 victory. Koln can take some hope from Robert Lewandowski firing a blank against Arsenal and it was just the 4^th game this season the Polish centre forward has failed to find the back of the net. Koln have scored over 60% of league goals in the final 15 minutes and will try and give themselves every chance of stealing something at the end of the game should they prevent Munich from gaining a sizeable lead.

Mario Gotze, Arjen Robben and Franck Ribery were notable absentees for the Arsenal defeat and the attacking trio were desperately missed. Douglas Costa has thrived on the left hand side but Robben’s absence from the right is a big loss but the Dutch winger is close to making a comeback. Peter Stoger doesn’t have many injury concerns to contend with as just Mergim Mavraj is out of action.

Bayern Munich

Stats: W-9 L-0 D-0

Recent Form - WWWWL

Koln

Stats: W-4 L-3 D-2

Recent Form - WLDWL

Head-to-head record:

Possible Line-ups

Bayern Munich (4-3-3) – Neuer, Lahm, Boateng, Alaba, Bernat, Alonso, Thiago, Vidal, Muller, Douglas Costa, Lewandowski. 

Koln (4-4-2) – Horn, Olkowski, Sorensen, Heintz, Hector, Risse, Lehman, Gerhardt, Bittencourt, Osako, Modeste.

Injury List/Suspended Players

Bayern Munich – Benatia(inj), Ribery (inj), Robben (inj),Gotze (inj), Badstuber (inj), Rode (inj).

Koln– Mavraj (inj)

League Positions