In this very informative and not at all search engine friendly post we’ve put together the teams that we can face in the Champions League when they start the draw on Monday morning and finish it some time on Tuesday afternoon when they’ve interviewed every tedious European Cup legend they can find.
To add a little extra, we’ve added some pros and cons. So here are the teams:
Barcelona
Pros: Great city, lots of good places to eat and drink, wonderful architecture, beach, cheap hooch, reasonable flights.
Cons: Messi, Neymar, Suarez
Real Madrid
Pros: They’re not as good as they should be under Rafa Benitez. Benzema might film all his teammates doing sex stuff with other people in their sex bits and destroy team harmony.
Cons: They’re still very, very good and Cristiano Ronaldo has some Champions League pedigree against us.
Atletico Madrid
Pros: The third best Spanish side we could draw.
Cons: Quite miserly in defence, they like a pressing game and we find that hard to cope with sometimes.
Wolfsburg
Pros: We’ve beaten them already (in the Emirates Cup), so they know we can turn it on when it really matters.
Cons: TGSTEL – wouldn’t it just be typical for him to play his best game ever or something? Assuming he’s not loaned to Scunthorpe before the game.
Zenit St Petersburg
Pros: Hulk is not actually The Hulk, just a Hulk. The indolence of Arshavin may still be smeared all over them.
Cons: Owned by Gazprom who sponsor the Champions League, so their progress to the final is probably already sorted.
Bring on Barcelona, let them talk DNA with our young fullback.
Nah kidding. Let them come, let them leave empty handed. Both in terms of score and of young player.
They’re already trying to work out how they can find some Farca DNA in Ozil!
Bring ’em on! Any of ’em! We can take ’em all!!
Apart from Barca obvs.
And prolly not Madrid…Atletico will be tough actually..
Wolfsburg can score goals too..
So Zenit.
Zenit please.
Minutes per goal in 2015-16 CL (spot the striker that isn’t world class…)
Ronaldo 49
Giroud 59
Lewandowski 65
Benzema 67
Dzyuba 78
Muller 87
Suarez 90
Messi 90
Again with the ripping on Giroud! Enough already!
The opposite!
Surely TGSTEL must be on that list?
This is amusing to me. Either he’s sincere and misses your point, or he’s sarcastic and you’re missing his. Nothing a little juvenile emoji-insertion wouldn’t have cleared up.
You cannot be serious.
LOL 🙂
Cons: Travelling to Russia midweek midwinter.
I’d take Wolfsburg over Zenit just because of that…
Worthwhile point.
Can Arsenal do it on a freezing cold February night in St Petersburg?
Napoleon and the Nazis couldn’t.
Please read the above in the light-hearted manner it was intended.
As a Jewish-Cossack-German-Frenchman who lost toes to freezing temperatures, and who enjoys a foray into the unexplored hard-pigheadedly, I AM OFFENDED!
Shame on you.
It’s almost sad you have to add that. But such is our hyper-vigilant, hyper-accusatory, hyper-litigious world. We’ve reached puritanical levels of zealous linguistic prescriptivism.
Don’t we have a fairly poor run of Champo Leagueo resulto’s in Russia?
March*
They’ll be at home for the second leg, which is 2nd/3rd week of March – slightly more palatable conditions.
Also interesting to note that UEFA ruled in the summer that Russian clubs won’t be drawn against Ukrainian clubs ‘until further notice’ – not sure if this is still in effect but would increase our chances a little too.
And I was there for TGSTEL’s greatest game, scoring after 6 seconds of being on the pitch v Sp*rs. He can’t beat that.
St Petersburg is cold, but it’s not Moscow cold. It could be alright. Zenit are also on their winter break – they have no competitive games until the CL game. I mean well rested maybe, but rusty?
St. Pete sure as hell is as cold as Moscow!
They’re pretty much the same, St Petersburg is slightly milder in the dead of winter and height of summer due to it’s coastal location but Moscow is also a lot further south so it’s warmer in summer but colder in winter. In early spring, there is essentially no difference.
I’d take Wolfsburg too.
1. because TGSTEL plays there and I’d enjoy watching him again.
2. because they are a good side which should provide for a good game.
There is only one team in that list that strikes a perfect balance between i) being overhyped enough to induce a no-nonsense approach from our side, and ii) not having as much as it seems to justify that hype.
In my opinion it represents the best chance for us to qualify, if we have everybody fit.
Bring on Real Madrid.
No Wolfsburg please.
My thoughts exactly. They’re not as good as many think, but good enough to bring the best out of the boys, instead of complacency.
They just equalled the record for biggest Champions league victory of all time.
And one of their players, on his own, outscored 21 of the 31 other teams in the competition.
Yeah, against f***ing Malmo…
Real it will be !
This is really a good one.
Almost choke me when I’m reading this and eating at the same time
Not sure how it got here.
This was suppose to be a response to the third post by Stuart_Ten
Haha, appreciate that.
Not the choking part..
Not as terrifying as it could have been if the games of the Manchester clubs had played out differently. It would be nice to get one of the latter three, obviously, but perhaps even better to knock out Real. The only option that really fills me with dread is Barcelona, so lets hope they get drawn in a position where we can only meet them in the final.
Got a gut feeling it’ll be Athletico
I genuinely think Real would be an easier draw for us than Atleti. The latter would absolutely wreck us over two legs. They’re a complete team and all of their greatest strengths are exactly what we cant cope with. Real of course have plenty of big guns, but they’re undeniably fragile.
On the flipside, we’re the exact sort of team who on our night could cause Athletico some headaches. Also Benitez might not be the greatest league manager in the world, but he does have cup pedigree.
The Spanish teams are the ones to avoid but most likely we’ll end up with because we are The Arsenal, we don’t get ready draws – the quota for this decade was over last year! So if it’s one of those three them like you I prefer Real simply because they are not a team so much as a collection of super stars (stating the obvious). Our backline including the keeper have shown they can be mean this whole calendar year. Our attacking players including the most creative player on the planet currently, can play some wonderful combination play and… Read more »
We need Sanchez to be at his peak to have any chance of winning this competition. We especially need our flair players to be at their peak.if that’s the case I wouldn’t worry whom we draw.More often it’s the individuals that make the difference in this competition.
It is good that we’ve grouped with Bayern early, so at least the scary stuff we’re potentially got is Barcelona. But given Monaco last year, it can show that anything could happen. So be it. Anybody. No problem.
Except Barcelona. Rather had them in the final *bloody cough*
How about Real? They got annihilated in home by four goals. Without Messi in starting XI. I think we are relatively in same level with them *overly optimistic*
It’s going to be Barca, obviously. Let’s not get our hopes up for anything else. 3-0 loss away and a rousing 2-0 win for us at home, with the crowd screaming for that third goal for the entire last 15 minutes.
And so shall it always be.
We’re going to play at home first. So, not sure why the home crowd would scream for a third if we are 2-0 up against Barca.
They’d have to. we’d need all the goals we could get before the second leg.
After being happy getting monaco in last year’s draw and then watching how that turned out, let’s just hope that for once we don’t screw up the 1st leg and leave ourselves a fighting chance in the 2nd
if history tells us anything, we have to take each club extremely serious. if we happen to draw the “easier” club of the bunch in zenit, please let the Monaco disaster be a lesson.
I’ll take anyone other than those ref bunging, cheating, diving c**ts Barca….I’ll take revenge & beat them in the final.
Jus bring anyone apart from barca
Hell, we’re going to have to play Barca at some point, why not get them out of the way at the outset. (Kinda like eating your vegetables first.)
Except that in this case, the veggies are most likely to choke anyone to death!
As we bloody stay away from Thursday nights, bring on anyone I say.
I much rather Barca and Bayern draw each other in the quarters in order to create an easier path to the final. Remember when we played that mighty European power Villarreal in the semis? (Then again, I guess we had Real Madrid and Juventus before that so…)
wolfsburg cos you cant beat a german trip.however ground is small,so tickets may be scarce.
barca,great city ,but match day you are shoved up in the gods,where you can see f all ..
Living in Barcelona I have my own selfish fingers crossed. But I still think we can take them and it’d be nice if a few more people were pissed at me for wearing a Bellerin shirt round town!
I live here too, dreaming of beating them at the Camp Nou!
I’ve only been here since august and struggling to find places to watch matches where there are arsenal fans. Do you know anywhere good?
Hope we get Athletico because they’re good enough that we wouldn’t let our guard down against them a la Monaco, but they’re a side I think we could beat over two legs at the top of our game. And seen as we haven’t played Simeone’s Athletico, it would make for a mouth-watering tie to look forward to.
Wolfsburg are pretty ordinary, don’t know much of anything about Zenit. Hopefully we avoid the big Spanish two at least.
Wolfsburg.The clash of the Arsenal CL hat trick stars HFB v TGSTEL.Bring it on (If NB52 is selected)
Doesn’t matter who we draw. We can only beat whoever is put in front of us. So bring on whoever we draw.
You just blew my mind!
A coq-sized ox?
An ox-sized Coq?
The like is solely for the name
We beat Bayern. We can beat anybody. Plus, we are the only team in Europe with an Ozil.
Yes we did beat them but get murdered in the away leg, therefore we would be out.
We didn’t need to win that game, so we didn’t.
Not suggesting we would have won if it we had needed to, mind you, but it probably wouldn’t have ended 5-1.
I seriously doubt we’d have lost 5-1 if it was a KO game having won 2-0 @home
Zenit may look good on paper, but I’d prefer not to fly to Russia and back midweek while we’re trying to win the league
We’ll already have it wrapped up with a 5-0 first leg thrashing, so we’ll play the U18 squad there. Barring injuries of course.
I don’t think who we get to play is as important as (a) who’s available to play and (b) who’s getting the luck.
As Napoleon once said – and I’m paraphrasing – I’d rather have my luck on the night than ten times the luck when our balls are drawn in Nyon.
9 years ago I moved to Madrid. For 9 years I’ve been hoping for us to meet either of the Madrid teams.
Could this year be my year? Bring on Real or Atlético please!
It doesn’t matter who we play because eventually Arsenal will have to play the best to be the best. They’ve beaten Bayern, no reason why they can’t beat Madrid or Barça. Fuck em!
#COYG!!!
We are used to exiting at this stage so what better way to progress than thru the defending champions? Either we get them outta the way or do our exit thing. If we bundle off Barca we will gain great psychological momentum to appear in the finals
I would prefer as easy as possible, if even possible, draw early so perhaps by the time we would face the strongest team we would be much more healthy and better prepared to compete and win it all. Bottom line, if our intention is to win it all, we will have to face the best sooner or later, just later might give us a better chance.
In truth it doesn’t matter. From hereon in its big boy territory and I consider us big boys. I have a feeling a sneaky feeling that we might just go all the way.
The only one I would worry about is Barca. Real Madrid have a soft core and can be done on the counter attack.
I know it is quite obvious but whoever we play it is imperative to win at home.
with a clean sheet
Off topic
Did anyone else see the guy go for Theo’s shirt when he was subbed?Theo’s reaction was hilarious.
He wasn’t after his shirt. He was telling him to get a move on
His name is Pardo thought he was abit of a prick actually.
We should get Atletico. 50/50 and we most definitely will not DARE take them for granted unlike Wolfsburg(someone was talking about preseason) or Zenit(they’re actually good). Don’t want a repeat of last season where we thought the game was won before we stepped on the pitch.
I want Barca. You will probably have to beat them at some point to win thr cl so let’s find out sooner rather than later.
Would much rather play them over one leg at a neutral site than have a two-legged tie. Odds of pulling an upset are much higher in a single game.
Plus, we need Barca to eliminate Bayern for us.
…or the other way round? Would rather meet the Bavarians again in a final as we know we can beat them.
None of those would be thrilled about facing the gooners. Except for Barcelona who I sense wouldn’t give two sh1ts who they draw.
I’m thinking Chelski in the next round (demolish them), City in the next (who will have scraped through against Wolfsburg) then whoever’s left standing – and bring ’em on.
I’ll have some of what you’re having! Unless it’s crack, which seems very likely.
Whoever it is we will probably make it hard for ourselves and then get through!
Come on boys!
PS Not Barca please!
Is Bendtner working as the Green Cross Code man these days?
Bit of a come down that.
Still, if it was good enough for Darth Vader…
Bet you its Barca. Those twats.
Yeah, what a pack of referee-surrounding cunts.
Any team on the list will be fine, even Barca and Real.
To play and lost to a great team is better than to play and lost to Monaco….
Knowing our luck it’ll be the Stay Puft marshmallow man.
Thanks Mathieu ‘it just popped in there’
What with Platini in football prison, we might now have a chance.