Arsenal's Champions League Draw

Well, we managed to qualify for the group stages for the 10th year running after beating Slavia Prague 5-0 on aggregate, so we get the excitement of getting to see our team play in the Champions League once again. I discussed the possibilities of who we could face in an article before, but now that the draw has been settled we know who our opponents are.

Our opponents in Group H will be Steaua Bucharest, Slavia Prague, and the winner of Monday’s Sevilla vs AEK Athens match which was postponed due to the tragic death of Antonio Puerta.

Assuming that Sevilla make it through, we should have a pretty entertaining list of fixtures to watch, as Steaua Bucharest are an attacking side, Slavia Prague were good enough to beat out Ajax, and Sevilla are one of the best teams in Spain right now.

I think it is a great draw, as we will have good matches, but we will still be fairly assured of making it through to the knockout rounds. However, it will be a tough challenge to finish ahead of Sevilla, and the Spanish giants should keep us on our toes throughout the group stages. It'll be great to see how Gael Clichy and Dani Alves handle each other as they are two of the best attacking defenders in world football.

Let's hope that we can once again make it to the Champions League finals.

Now that we've qualified: The Champions League Draw Possibilities

Now that we've qualified (after cruising over Sparta Prague) I think it's about time to discuss the possible draws that we could face in the Champions League group stages. The way this works is that UEFA randomly draws one team from each pot into each group, so you get a team from pot 1, a team from pot 2, a team from pot 3, and a team from pot 4 in each group. Here are what the pots look like.

Pot 1:
AC Milan
Barcelona
Liverpool
Inter Milan
Arsenal
Real Madrid
Manchester United
Chelsea

Pot 2:
Valencia
Lyon
Porto
Sevilla/AEK Athens
PSV Eindhoven
Roma
Benfica
Werder Bremen

Pot 3:
Celtic
Schalke 04
Stuttgart
Steaua Bucharesti
CSKA Moscow
Sporting Lisbon
Lazio
Marseille

Pot 4:
Rangers
Shakhtar Donetsk
Beşiktaş
Olympiacos
Dynamo Kiev
Fenerbahçe
Slavia Prague
Rosenborg

Even the teams in pots 3 and 4 are quite competitive, so it would be possible to be drawn a horrible group like Arsenal, Sevilla, Celtic, and Fenerbaçe. However, we could also end up with AEK Athens, Steaua Bucharesti, and Rosenborg, a fairly easy challenge.

Personally, I would like to see a draw of 1 fairly difficult teams and 2 "easy" teams. The reason that I don't want all of our challengers to be "easy" teams is that we never seem to do our best against sub-par opponents. Take last season for example, in which we won the double against the Champions, drew Chelsea home and away, and beat Liverpool 3 times across the course of the season (although we lost to them once); while we lost to teams that were closer to relegation than to European spots.

I think the ideal draw would be something like PSV Eindhoven (for revenge), Steaua Bucharesti, and Rosenborg. That way we would be pretty sure of getting through to the next round, but we would be kept on our toes by PSV, and we would be able to get our revenge. I guess we'll have to wait and see how it goes tomorrow...

What do you think would be the ideal draw? PSV for revenge, or AEK for a (hopefully) easy way through? Post your comments here.