The draw for the Europa League has been made and Arsenal are in Group H with Belarusian side Bate Borisov, FC Cologne, and Serbian outfit Red Star Belgrade.
The Gunners have never played Bate or Red Star, but did meet Cologne in the 1970/71 Fairs Cup.
Update: Thanks to @crumppetz_ and @trev_brian who reminded me we played Red Star in the UEFA Cup in 1978 and lost 2-1 on aggregate in the third round the competition.
The games will take place on Thursdays, with the following schedule:
Matchday 1: September 14
Matchday 2: September 28
Matchday 3: October 19
Matchday 4: November 2
Matchday 5: November 23
Matchday 6: December 7
Premier League games those weekends will always be played on Sunday, and we’re away from home in five of them.
Those fixtures are Chelsea, Everton, Manchester City, Burnley, and Southampton. The second game in the group stage comes before the home fixture against Brighton on September 30th, which is the only home game we have after a European tie.
The official site has more info about the Europa League, and some very attractive ticket pricing, which sees adult prices start at £15.50 and Junior Gunners from £4.25
Tricky one indeed – throw in the youngsters ehh… rotate much… don’t think that will be the case
YES! Amped to see them play in my hometown! 🙂
i hope ill have the money to come see them too, even if its just a second team.
Reasonably tough draw as Cologne are on their way back up after having been poor for a while. Red Star are a big name though have suffered financially.
Means we’ll have to play reasonably well to make sure we get through.
Cologne’s star striker from last season (Modeste) has gone on loan to China for some reason. Wikipedia didn’t tell me who (if anyone) they got in to replace him, but their top scorer apart from him had 6 league goals…
That’s more than our starting striker last season.
They bought Jhon Cordoba from Mainz. He’s a bit like Danny Welbeck- pace and power but not clinical. He scored 5 goals in the league last season for Mainz so he isn’t quite as scary as Modeste (that feels like a weird sentence to type having seen him at Blackburn).
So glad not to have drawn Bayern Munich this year….
Let’s go on and win this!
Knowing our luck, BM will fail to qualify from their CL group, drop into EL and thrash us 7 – 0 in the first knockout round and go on to win it.
Bait? Baity? Bee-ay-tee-ee? Batty?
Bah-tay
BATE is an acronym of Borisov Automobile and Tractor Electronics 🙂
Is Hleb still playing ? Would be good to have 2 guaranteed games this season where the person doing the most aimless, endlessly sideways moves on the pitch is playing on the other side.
Torn on this competition. I don’t know if Arsene will take it seriously….and I don’t know whether I think he should or not either.
Nope, Alex Hleb is not playing, but his younger brother Viacheslav is. Although he plays for another team – Krumkachy, that had meteorically rised from the grassroots recently. 🙂
so it should be pronounced B.A.T.E. ?
Do they have new handbrakes?
“Put it in H!”
Like you say Latte, but starting with B. 🙂
Red Star away will be an experience.
Half decent city. Atmosphere will be something.
Cologne wold be a better trip though, I reckon. Game should be a competitive affair and it’s a beautiful place. Decent beer as well.
Well, considering the quality of the opposition, and the alleged standing in which we hold ourselves amongst Europe’s best, nothing short of six wins should be considered successful.
This is a competition which we should be favourites to win. No excuses. It probably is our best chance of guaranteeing Champions League football next season also. Not that we have much business there. If we want to be considered a competitive team in the CL, then winning the Europa should be among our top priorities this season.
I’m not even sure of that.
AC Milan will be a force this year.
Sp*rs will be in there.
Everton are decent.
Another few strong teams i’m sure.
Absolutely not in my opinion. Play our second team in Europe and focus fully on the league. If we make it to the final stages then think about taking it seriously.
er, did you seen our first two games of the season? The only thing we are favourites for is a season of struggle unless Arsene pulls his finger out.
I don’t care how tough the group is, we should definitely be rotating and playing the youngsters. Time to see who can step up.
Good draw. Just that we might do it the Arsenal way-THE HARD WAY. But we can go through to the final in Lyon. Lacazette scoring the winning goal against his former club.
I honestly believe we shouldn’t snub this competition.
During the first stage though it would be a good idea to experiment with some new systems and young players. (ramsey as number 10, maybe 442, try Chambers and Niles etc)
However, we shouldn’t underestimate our opponents as we usually do!
Thursday nights in Belarus.. Not what we all dream about but personally I hope we take it seriously. For me it is probably a more viable route back into the CL, and I am sure the players would enjoy winning some silverware (it certainly seems to have done the Utd players morale some good)
Can we do it on a cold wintry Thursday night in Belarus?
yey.
What a magic.
Crvena Zvezda away will be very tough. FC Cologne also very good and you just can’t underestimate germans. I don’t know much about Bate, but I think they are quite regular on the european stage.
Dundalk FC beat them 3-0 last season in CL qualifiers. Dundalk are LOI winners but they wouldn’t even be Championship level. Half of the team have full time jobs. If we have trouble against them, we may start chasing the dragon, cos we aint chasing silverware.
Bate are masters.
fucks given – zero
Ok. Fuck off.
Sorry folks, if you’re excited about the Europa League you’ve got to take a serious look at your expectations, we’ve spent ten plus years mocking others for being in it, and now we’re all excited? Give me a break.
By all means blood the youngsters in it, but would I care if we got to the final? no not really…
I just like watching us play me. I am not a “I want I want I want baby” like some others…
are you really shitting yourself in a group of Europa league really ? our B team will do just fine, did you forget that 20 years running we always get past group stage in CL, and now you are shitting pants of a group in EL whit teams like Cologne, and Bate borisov.
YOu are really down arsenal fans.
Serbian birds are fit, looking forward to it.
Hell yeah! Can’t wait to have a few pints with you guys that come over!
Don’t let this distract you from the speculation that Utd might be signing Lemar in a few days after AW said Monaco won’t sell ?? Ffs. The state of our club.
I’ll quite happily let it distract me
Would like to see us take this seriously, It’s a European trophy afterall and could be the only viable option back to Champions League football.
Unfortunately I don’t think Wenger particularly values this competition.
We don’t value the EFL, PL or CL either.
They haven’t been realistic targets for a long time.
If we don’t take this competition seriously?
You can’t just add it to that list.
We have actually played Red Star before, the 78-79 UEFA Cup last 16. Lost 1-0 in Belgrade and drew the second leg at home 1-1
Played Zvezda in the Uefa-cup in 78/7. Zvezda won 1-0 in Belgrade and played 1-1 at Highbury if I remember correctly. Dule Savic scored at the end
When did people here start referring to Red Star as Crvena Zvezda? I had no idea who that was until the BBC listed them as Red Star.
Because the clubs name is Crvena Zvezda. Imagine people from Balkans calling Arsenal-“Oružarnica”
Yes, I’m very much aware of that, but they’ve always been referred to as Red Star Belgrade here.
PS – I couldn’t care less how people from the Balkans pronounce Arsenal.
Crvena Zvezda is real name of the klub. Red Star is translation to english language.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Star_Belgrade
When does the club announce who we play on which dates in the Europa league?
Our draw in the Europa is as tough as ManUre’s is in the CL and I’m not even surprised
“Premier League games those weekends will always be played on Sunday, and we’re away from home in five of them. Those fixtures are Chelsea, Everton, Manchester City, Burnley, and Southampton.” That’s pretty devastating. Virtually assures either we lose a LOT of those Sunday games in the Prem if we play close to full strength sides in the Europa OR we play youngsters and backups and risk not advancing in the Europa (which is what I think we should do). IMO, the Premier League, difficult as it will be, has to be our focus. I don’t give two craps about the… Read more »
I agree. Especially under those circumstances. Zero fucks given for the Euro-Disney Cup
Welcome to our level lads
Arsenal normally loses the apparently easy matches. A home loss against Red Star is definitely in the cards.
Never played against Crvena Zvezda ?? ( Red Star )
What about the 1978. UEFA Cup, with Dušan Savić scoring in the dying moments at Highbury to knock out Arsenal in the third round ?
( Yes, I’m an Arsenal supporter from Serbia, and I’m incredibly happy to see the gunners drawn in the group my boyhood club )
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hE8FqZvT6xo
Fuck, didn’t want Red Star to be in this group… You can imagine where I come from, from this statement… Anyway, here’s a chance to see my beloved Arsenal live although I don’t think that A team will be here for the game.
Also, UEFA Cup 78-79, https://youtu.be/NCEsnm7AsOM
But those are some long lost times when Zvezda was a cracker.
We have played Red Star Belgrade. I was there at Highbury, they beat us on aggregate after we had beaten Hajduk Split in an earlier round.
Apparently we played Red Star in the 1978 Uefa Cup?
Finally some games we might win!
Wrong. We played against Red Star in 1978. We lost in Belgrade and in London was 1:1. I am from Belgrade and I support both clubs. So I don’t know what to do when my to clubs meet each other.
Arsenal played Red Star in 1978 Uefa Cup, losing 2-1 on aggregate. Red Star went on to reach the final.
I went to the Cologne-Arsenal friendly back in 2011, saw Jenks score his amazing own goal and confidently told all my mates that Gervinho was the future of Arsenal football club.
that’s a tough tough group
Probably showing my age, but the very mention of Cologne brought Tony Woodcock to mind.
Master(BATE) Borisov
Ok, I’ll take my coat.
Im surprised a guy doesnt know how to spell masturbate 🙂
You’d have to be a w*nker not to…
Belarusian, please. With one ‘s’. Thank you.
Fixed, sorry 😉
Nice schedule for the EUROPA LEAGUE:
September 14th: Europa League matchday one
September 17th: Chelsea (A)
September 28th: Europa League matchday two
October 1st: Brighton (H)
October 19th: Europa League matchday three
October 22nd: Everton (A)
November 2nd: Europa Legue matchday four
November 3rd: Manchester City (A)
November 23rd: Europa League matchday five
November 26th: Burnley (A)
December 7th: Europa League matchday six
December 10th: Southampton (A)
we have played Red Star before, in uefa cup in 1978, lost 1-0 away and drew 1-1 at home, to go out. Red Star are also known as FK Crvena Zvezda.
OK, so it’s about 25 years too late, but I’m quite excited to see us play Red Star.
Red Star in Belgrade will be awesome. It’s a wonderful city – it is even home to a bar called Gunners Pub! The atmosphere in their stadium is brilliant, too.
Not only did Arsenal play against Red Star in 1978, a few years later one of the best players in that Red Star team moved to Arsenal and was considered marquee signing at the time of arrival: https://www.arsenal.com/news/news-archive/the-adoration-and-failure-of-petrovic
So we shouldn’t blow this off b/c let’s be honest we haven’t won anything that requires consistency in forever (the F.A. cup is great but you really only play 2 games against the PL the entire competition). Regardless of how we view this competition – it’s still a European trophy. We could probably rotate until we get to the knockout rounds to keep bigger players fresh and still advance. Being realistic we have virtually no chance of winning the league and this might actually be our best route to the CL again. This season even though it’s just starting already… Read more »
You are wrong about Arsenal never playing Red Star. They played in UEFA cup in November 1978, the first game my father took me to see.
This was one of the reasons why I became Arsenal supporter when I moved to London in 1989 and eventually a season ticket holder in 1997.
the other two reasons are Red Star captain playing for Arsenal (Petrovic) and same colour scheme.
I am looking forward to this match and I will support Red Star in London and Arsenal in Belgrade!
Wow…so refreshing not to meet our usual nemesis Bayern and Barcelona.
Wilshire, Chambers, Walcott, Elneny, Ospina, Holding will definitely be doing a lot of travelling in the coming months. Plus Iwobi too and all the whipper snappers coming through. There is no way in Beluruse, Belgrade (or indeed hell) that Wenger will pick a full tilt squad ahead of away trips to City, Chelsea and Southampton.