Bayern head into home straight buoyed by Lazio win

BERLIN: Bayern Munich will head into their home Bundesliga clash with VfB Stuttgart on Saturday aiming to replicate the performance which swept away Lazio in the Champions League last 16, coach Hansi Flick said.

Flick was impressed with Wednesday's 2-1 win which gave the German and European champions a 6-2 aggregate victory over the Serie A side as Bayern reached the quarter-finals for a record 19th time.

"The way we played football is how I imagine it," Flick said after Bayern strolled into the last eight.

Bayern top the Bundesliga table on 58 points from 25 games, four ahead of closest rivals RB Leipzig who visit relegation-threatened Arminia Bielefeld in the round's opening fixture on Friday.

Leipzig can ill-afford another slip up after a 1-1 home draw with Eintracht Frankfurt in the previous round of matches, when Arminia boosted their hopes of avoiding the drop with a 2-1 win at Bayer Leverkusen which lifted them up to the safety zone.

"They (Arminia) have played unbelievably aggressively under (manager) Frank Kramer of late," Leipzig coach Julian Nagelsmann said.

"They have defended high and beat Leverkusen with the strength of their running. That serves as a warning to us and with three important points at stake, it would make no sense to underestimate them."

Third-placed Wolfsburg are 10 points off the pace and they visit 12th-placed Werder Bremen on Saturday while Frankfurt in fourth, who are a further four points adrift, host seventh-placed Union Berlin.

Fifth-placed Borussia Dortmund are away to 14th-placed Cologne and coach Edin Terzic was wary after a 2-1 defeat in the reverse fixture which ended Cologne's 18-match winless run stretching back to last season.

"It's an issue for us because they played in a similar formation as in the last few weeks," Terzic told Thursday's news conference.

"We have to be careful and we'll have to take a good look at situations which we didn't handle well in that game. We are confident that it will look better on Saturday than in the first half of the season."

Dortmund are set to be without England forward Jadon Sancho and Portugal wing back Raphael Guerreiro through injury while captain Marco Reus is doubtful.