Bayern attacking bulldozer flattens Olympiacos

The Champions League is "done and dusted until February" for Josep Guardiola after his side cruised into the last 16 with a 4-0 win over Olympiacos. "Winning the group was the team's main target – it's what we've pursued from match to match," concurred Jérôme Boateng.

It always looked like a case of when rather than whether Bayern would qualify from Group F. "We want to score as early as possible," declared coach Josep Guardiola prior to the Olympiacos match, and early goals are exactly what his players delivered. An eighth-minute Douglas Costa strike was followed by quick-fire goals from Robert Lewandowski and Thomas Müller, effectively ending the tie within 20 minutes of kick-off before Kingsley Coman added Bayern's fourth midway through the second half.

"We showed from the start how much we wanted to win," Manuel Neuer told UEFA.com after the game. The four goals took the home side's tally to 17 in the UEFA Champions League this season so far, three shy of the group stage record and – ahead of Wednesday's games – the highest total of any team in this campaign.

Of those goals, 14 were scored in Munich, nine of them in the first half, with Bayern getting their first no later than the 13th minute as they put Dinamo Zagreb, Arsenal and Olympiacos out of sight within the opening half hour.

The high-tempo, all-out attacking approach is working to devastating effect for Guardiola, especially on home turf where Bayern have now scored 32 goals in their last seven games. "Experience told me that here [in Munich] we needed to play with a lot attackers to score a lot of goals," the Bayern coach said after the game. "It's a risk, but if we are able to control the game, we can play with five attacking players like we did tonight."

The risk paid off against Olympiacos, with four different attackers getting their names on the scoresheet. Though Lewandowski and Müller (five each) have contributed the lion's share of Bayern's goals in the competition so far, efforts from Costa (two), Mario Götze (two), Arjen Robben (one), Coman (one) and David Alaba (one) are evidence that there are goals throughout the Bavarian side this season.

Bayern may well equal or beat that 20-goal record for the most group stage goals on matchday six – jointly held by Manchester United, Real Madrid and Barcelona – but Guardiola will already be thinking ahead to the latter rounds of the competition, where tougher tests and greater rewards beckon.