Champions League Draw - 29th August '24 | Opponents (pg69) | Fixtures (pg128)

[GortonBlue62]

Every point won't count. Teams that win their first 6 games will almost certainly be guaranteed a top 8 spot which could mean 2 dead rubbers. Likewise, Lose that many and you've got 2 meaningless games left. Then there will be a massive cluster of teams in the middle that after as little as 4,5,6 games will have secured a playoff spot and won't be able to reach the top 8 making their final few games entirely pointless too as it doesnt matter if you finish 9th or 24th, you'll still end up in the play offs.

But it's better to finish 1st than 8th (probably) so the last two games won't be meaningless.

 

[chaddblue]

Is the group of 16 seeded so that the teams that finish 1 to 8 can't play each other and play away first?

 

[Bluearmy]

Thursday Leagues drawn using the same system tomorrow and then UEFA have to ensure games geographically close together are not played on the same night.
Then PL games scheduled for Sundays in September and October might be shifted if one of the teams plays in Europe on the Tuesday.
Don't book travel, hotels, shifts etc until the fixture dates are known.

Yep. Be Saturday before its all clear

 

[GortonBlue62]

Is the group of 16 seeded so that the teams that finish 1 to 8 can't play each other and play away first?

That's my understanding.

Once the League Stage and the play off round are complete we will know our parh to the final.

1st seed and 2nd seed cannot meet until the final.

 

[Tugay One Cup]

I'm glad we won the thing before I lost any and all interest in European football.

Which dong thought this would be a better competition?

 

[Ribble73]

Yep. Be Saturday before its all clear

Bratislava’s home ground only holds 22,500 -so Tickets will be at an absolute premium

 

[Matty M24blue]

Tbf from a selfish point of view better chance at some different euro aways or ones we haven’t done for a few years.

 

[SebastianBlue]

Did you write a simulator?

Haha, noooo…

 

[lazza]

**NERD ALERT**

Quite like the new format, 8 different teams to play, including a couple of new opponents. But I still don't like the draw - there's simply no advantage to be in Pot 1.

Anyway, statistically, we've got one of the harder draws. If you go by average coefficients of the teams drawn, we've got the worst draw of the British teams:
Celtic: 59.4
Aston Villa: 61.7
Arsenal: 63.4
Liverpool: 64.9
City 65.7

And overall, only 12 teams have a harder draw than us. On paper, even Girona has a marginally easier draw (64.6). Of the Pot 1 teams, Dortmund and Real Madrid have the easiest draw (<60 average coefficent) and PSG by far the hardest (74). Feyenoord has the toughest draw overall having the three toughest teams they could possibly draw (average 74.8) and Young Boys the easiest (55.8).

 

[ThreesKompany]

The odds of not playing a Spanish team must have been quite big.

Well, Girona wasn't an option, so really only three possibilities.

Speaking of Girona, they get both Liverpool and Arsenal at home. Would love to see the reaction if those two get injuries in that match. Cue the conspiracies.