Bayern Munich can win a record 10th Champions League match in a row with victory at CSKA Moscow on Wednesday.
Reigning champions Bayern equalled Barcelona's feat of nine successive triumphs in Europe's premier club competition when they edged past Viktoria Plzen 1-0 earlier this month.
Pep Guardiola's men have already secured their passage into the round of 16 with four wins from four, but they will seal top spot if they better Manchester City's result against Viktoria Plzen.
They have conceded just once in the Champions League group stages so far, giving them the best defensive record in the competition, and they could hardly be in better form fresh off a superb 3-0 Bundesliga win at title rivals Borussia Dortmund on Saturday.
Former Dortmund midfielder Mario Gotze scored the opener against his one-time employers before Arjen Robben and Thomas Muller added polish with late goals, as Bayern retained their four-point lead at the top of the table.
The win was Bayern's seventh in a row, and they are now 25 games unbeaten on the road in the Bundesliga, just one short of a German top-flight record which they set themselves between December 1985 and August 1987.
The records do not stop there, either, with Bayern now unbeaten in 38 successive Bundesliga matches, another benchmark, while they have scored in each of their last 37 matches in all competitions as well.
Those statistics alone indicate just how tough it will be for CSKA, but the Russians are boosted by the likely absence of France winger Franck Ribery from Bayern's ranks.
Ribery suffered a fractured rib on international duty and did not feature against Dortmund, while midfielders Bastian Schweinsteiger (ankle), Xherdan Shaqiri (hamstring) and striker Claudio Pizarro (thigh) are also sidelined.
In better news for Bayern, midfielder Thiago Alcantara signed from Barcelona in the close-season returned from an ankle injury to feature as a substitute against Dortmund and could now play an extended role.
CSKA also enter the match on the back of a win, with Leonid Slutsky's side - who are fourth in the Russian Premier League - defeating rivals Spartak Moscow 1-0 on Saturday.
Ivorian forward Seydou Doumbia scored the game's only goal, his seventh in his last five matches for CSKA.
The Russian champions sit third in Group D, with just three points from their four matches, and they have conceded 12 goals in the process giving them the competition's joint-worst defence along with group rivals Plzen.
They have not kept a clean sheet in their last eight Champions League fixtures but will be heartened by the fact that they have won their last two home matches in the competition against German opposition, defeating Hamburg and Wolfsburg in the 2006-07 and 2009-10 seasons respectively.
Mario Fernandes returned from a long-term knee injury on Saturday for CSKA but Alan Dzagoev (hamstring) and Aleksandrs Cauna (toe) will miss out.
Via: CSKA Moscow-Bayern Munich Preview: Guardiola can make Champions League history
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