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

[I'm With Stupid]

I was just looking at Aston Villa's fixtures and wondering why they weren't playing anyone that actually won their leagues. So I checked out the pots, and noticed they've quietly got rid of the rule that if you win one of the top leagues, you're automatically in pot 1.

Pot 1 included us, Real Madrid, Inter and PSG, who actually won their leagues. Meanwhile, 3 German teams are in pot 1, none of which won the title, while Leverkusen at in pot 2. Liverpool are somehow in pot 1 for finishing 3rd, when they weren't even in the competition last season, and Barcelona complete the top seeds after winning absolutely fuck all last season. Meanwhile, the German champions and Europa League winners are in pot 2, and the Portuguese champions (Sporting) are in pot 3 behind a team that finished 10 points behind them (Benfica). So only 4 of the 'top-ranked' teams actually won anything last season.

If there was any doubt this whole thing was about favouring established teams, it's basically a return to the bullshit seeding system of the past, where big clubs from the big leagues will be given an easy ride regardless of their actual performance on the pitch.

 

[Gray]

I was delighted with the draw, first out and didn’t watch the rest of the crap.

That in itself was an absolute bonus.

 

[vmsuhail]

How does a computer make random choices?

Math.Random()

 

[Father Paul]

Interesting. I thought I had read that somewhere about Leipzig and Salzberg. OK. Would have been cool to play Girona.

Does look quite similar to the rugby super league in that there is a league table with the top few teams going through to the play off rounds. The few below that have knockout rounds to join the top teams in the play offs and then knockout games are played with the team winning the final being declared the champion irrespective of their league position.

If its one League to start with and the top 8 automatically go through,with the clubs positioned at 9 - 24 who have the play offs,whats the format for the club/s who finishes 8th and there are 4 teams with the same points,who goes through, is it goal difference etc ?
You just don`t know with UEFA organising it ?

Good point. GD must come into it at some stage along with results of games played against the teams who you finish level with.

 

[Gray]

How does a computer make random choices?

Ask Ernie.

 

[Gray]

Good point. GD must come into it at some stage along with results of games played against the teams who you finish level with.

What happens if you finish level with a team you have not played?

I think a coin toss will be involved at some stage.

 

[Skrastins]

It was cringe to see Ronaldo just standing and pushing a button and then wondering around, lol.

At least he got to plaster his face around the TV and got shiny new trophy.

 

[mcfcpride]

We should be getting 15-18 points out of the 24 bare minimum. Outside of Inter and PSG these fixtures don’t even look to be that hard. Juve away will be interesting, but other than that I can’t see us getting any lower than 15ish points

 

[lancs blue]

I have no idea how legitimate this is or isn't, but I saw it going around on Twitter. Apparently, we have the 'easiest' fixtures. I imagine it's just based on club European points or something along those lines so means very little.

View attachment 129978

Those numbers look a bit crude so being a saddo I did an assessment of the pot 1 teams based on the total points of their opponents divided by the club's own points in the rankings to give some weighting to an individual club's position in the rankings.

The lower the number the "easier" the opponents:
Real Madrid 3.520
Bayern 3.523
City 3.756
Liverpool 4.550
Dortmund 4.830
Leipzig 5.215
Inter 5.228
Barca 5.636
PSG 5.834

On that basis PSG can probably feel a bit hard done to being 4th in the rankings and getting the most difficult opponents.

 

[Haaland94]

Not sure if posted already, but give this watch