Makaay out to ruin Mourinho's TV dinner

For their last visit to London, Bayern Munich's players had planned a double celebration. The idea was not only to raise a glass or two to saluting a Champions League victory over Arsenal but also to combine the post-match dinner with a surprise 30th birthday party for their quiet inspiration, Roy Makaay.

The first part of the festivities was secured by completing victory in their last 16 tie despite the defeat at Highbury but, afterwards, they were forced to toast an absent friend because the Dutchman, for the first time in his high-flying 19-month Bayern career, had been sidelined by injury.

It proved an uncomfortable experience for both parties with Bayern having to learn to live without the razor edge of the man their fans believe is as good a striker as any in Europe and with the birthday boy biting his nails back home in Munich as he watched the match on TV with wife Joyce and their two kids.

"Roy's goals were the main reason we've got this far and we wanted to say thank you to him," his strike partner Claudio Pizarro had noted at the time. Now four weeks on, Makaay has belatedly made it to London and plans to repay the compliment. "Personally, I'm looking for a goal," warned the ideal team man yesterday. Normally, as 53 in 80 Bayern matches indicate, he finds one.

No-one can doubt that, even with Pizarro now sidelined with injury and the Dutchman still unsure whether his nagging thigh problem will stop him lasting out the full 90 minutes tonight, the predatory instincts of Rudolphus Anton Makaay, a more prolific marksman than any Chelsea can offer, still pose the biggest single threat to the Blues.

Makaay doesn't go along with the 'stalemate' theory which suggests the teams' compactness and solid defensive qualities will cancel each other out. "I think we are a quite different team to Chelsea. Up front and in midfield, our tactics are very attacking," Makaay said. "We might not play as openly as we normally do in the Champions League but we have come here to win. We've proved we are better than Arsenal over two games and we are confident that we can beat Chelsea too."