Arsenal must beware of 'Peru two'

So it is that Munich could well tonight turn to one of the most unlikely double acts in European football to finish the job they started a fortnight ago. If you had told a Bayern fan a decade ago that their European hopes might rest on two warriors from darkest Peru, you would have been laughed out of the Hofbrauhaus.

When they are not affectionately calling him 'Pizza', the fans hail Claudio-Pizarro as "El Bombardero" - the Bomber of the Andes - while Paolo Guerrero's surname translates as "Little Warrior".

Between the pair of them, Bayern believe that there is still enough ammunition to make Arsenal's latest moment of truth a familiarly wretched one.

Pizarro's two clinically-taken goals in the first leg had already demonstrated how the champions cannot afford again to offer him the sort of pressies which Kolo Toure gifted in Munich.

The Peruvian captain, long since deified in his homeland despite a record of under-achievement for the national team, averages a goal every two games in his four seasons at Bayern, having become a bit of cult figure in the process.

He's strong, fast, two-footed, good in the air and scores blinders. His only weakness, reckoned some, was that he could always find the target in Munich's Olympic Stadium but rarely on his travels. Until, much to Arsenal's chagrin, he scored four in a cup tie in Freiburg last week.

Neither should Arsenal underestimate the determination of a man who in the close season was left fearing he had played his last game.

LATE on in a Copa America match against Venezuela, he was elbowed in the head and thought little of it until he suffered a sleepless night and began to feel nauseous and dizzy.

The next day, the doctors discovered he had suffered a fractured skull and he was flown back to Bavaria for immediate surgery.

"I was a little bit afraid of never playing football again but once I'd had the treatment, I was assured and stopped worrying," he said.

After two months out of action, he scored twice in his first full game back for Bayern, and has since totalled 17 in all games this term.

At first, he reckoned he was a little worried about aerial challenges; against Arsenal, of course, this was of absolutely no concern since he was able to head home quite unmolested.

Yet while Pizarro is a menace, he is at least a known quantity.

There are those at Bayern who tell you Arsenal should be more concerned about the raw brilliance of 21-year-old Guerrero who, under the guidance of Bayern's incomparable old boy Gerd Muller, is rated the best strike prospect in Germany and has just been tied up until 2008 by a Bayern hierarchy desperate to keep richer suitors at bay.

Guerrero, who got 20 minutes as substitute for Pizarro in the first leg and almost put the tie out of Arsenal's reach in injury time, has made a remarkable transformation from Bayern's reserve side for whom he scored 21 in 24 games last season, to the first team this year, having scored six times in his nine appearances.

Magath loves the kid. "Guerrero is a street footballer with a nose for the right situation," he said. "He's on a roll and piling on the pressure on Pizarro and Makaay who have to recognise there's someone after their jobs.

"Pizarro has everything you need in a striker but he can be too easily satisfied. He likes to enjoy himself and have fun but we need to see more of his huge potential."

The question which Magath must wrestle with tonight is whether to play Pizarro as a sole striker in a 4-5-1 formation, a lonely role which does not really suit his mentality, or to gamble on pairing him with his young, livewire compatriot.

Either way, Magath is counting on Arsenal suffering and 'Pizza' delivering.