We drew 2-2 with Bayern Munich at the Allianz Arena on October 21, 2026, with Declan Rice’s 82nd-minute equaliser cancelling out Harry Kane’s penalty after Eberechi Eze had given us the lead. The point takes us to seven from three games in the Champions League league phase, and both sides stay unbeaten. It ends our run of 14 straight wins in the group and league phase, the second-longest in the competition’s history, and it comes three days before Everton visit the Emirates.
The cost was Bukayo Saka, who went off in the tenth minute with a quad injury that Arteta said had the medical staff concerned. The unresolved question from the football itself is how Kane found so much space between our lines, twice, in one night.
How did we take the lead after an early change?
Saka’s withdrawal forced Arteta’s hand early. Eze came on, Noni Madueke switched from the left to the right, and we lost very little of our shape.
Fifteen minutes later we were ahead. Martin Odegaard picked out Eze’s run with a superb pass, and Eze slid the ball under Manuel Neuer into the bottom corner. It was the earliest goal by a substitute in a Champions League game in more than four years, and after being taken off at half-time at Forest three days earlier, it was the answer Eze needed to give.
How did Kane get Bayern back into it?
By dropping deep and hitting passes nobody else on the pitch could see. Our lead lasted ten minutes. Kane collected the ball near the halfway line and threaded a pass through our midfield and around Gabriel, sending Alphonso Davies in behind Jurrien Timber on the left. Davies ran on and slotted it past David Raya as he came out.
The second came just after the hour. Bayern flooded our box, the ball was cut back to Kane in a central position, and his shot struck Timber’s arm. After a VAR check, the penalty stood, and Kane sent Raya the wrong way in the 61st minute. It was his 16th goal against us, and he has now scored in ten consecutive Champions League games.
Kane spent the night drifting into the space in front of our centre-backs, and nobody followed him there. On both goals, the damage came from a player who was not where our defensive shape expected him to be. Gabriel and William Saliba would normally handle that between them; without Saliba, it is a gap that teams with a Kane will keep looking for.
What turned it back our way?
Raya kept us in it, and then the substitutes finished it. Early in the second half, Neuer clawed Bruno Guimaraes’ header from a Rice corner onto the crossbar, and at the other end Raya pushed away a header from close range after a Bayern counter. After the penalty, Kai Havertz had a poked effort blocked on the line and Raya saved a curler from Luis Diaz, and we kept pushing.
The equaliser came from a quick move down our right. Madueke and Viktor Gyokeres combined, Gyokeres laid the ball off into Rice’s path, and Rice burst into the area and drilled a low shot past Neuer into the far corner. It was his sixth Champions League goal and his first away from home. Timber nearly won it in stoppage time with a bending shot from outside the box, but Neuer got a strong hand to it.
No Premier League side has had more goal contributions from substitutes this season than us. Eze scored after coming on in the tenth minute, Gyokeres made the equaliser from the bench, and the pattern from Leeds, Lille and Forest held in the hardest away game of the season so far.
Is a point in Munich a good result?
Yes, and Kane said as much himself, calling the draw a fair result. Bayern are unbeaten too, Kane is in the form of his life, and we came back from an early change and from falling behind on their ground. Seven points from Napoli, Lille and Bayern is a strong start to a league phase that includes Borussia Dortmund and Real Madrid at the Emirates later in the year.
Eze and Madueke both made the difference here. With Christos Tzolis still out, they are the two wide players Arteta now has to rely on, and on this evidence both are ready to carry it.
A point earned the hard way, on a ground where most teams leave with nothing.