I dont mind this new format, imo can provide much more exciting first half of the CL. group stage apart from the group of death was usually very much straightforward, with maybe one underperforming bigger club failing at group stage or someone in group of death.
here the sheer number of games between top clubs will be higher.
hope dippers, Arse get a real hard ass run of 8 opponents, especially Arteta, who is yet to make his team doing deep runs in multiple competitions.
Villa imo will suffer, for them even the old group stage would have been a big extra ask, now they might have some real tricky opponents if they are unlucky with the draw. imagine them playing Bayern, Real, Leverkusen, Juventus, PSV, Salzburg, Girona, Monaco in between some hard PL games all the way until January.
best to avoid as many top league opponents imo for City, would be good to get 3-4 100% win games, where something like a 7-1-0 or 7-0-1 or 6-2-0 gets us 1st or 2nd place still, very much doubt there will be clubs tho winning even 7 games let alone 8 of 8. to win 4 away from home is hard with some of those will be between tricky domestic fixtures too.
expect 19-20 points be enough to be in top 3 in league stage.