Arsenal’s qualification for the knock-out stages of the Europa League has been assured for some weeks now, but last night’s 1-0 win over Qarabag completed the group stage as all the other qualifiers were finalised.
The Gunners go into Monday’s draw with 10 15 potential opponents for the first knock-out round. They are:
BATE, Celtic, Club Brugge, Fenerbahce, Galatasaray, Krasnodar, Lazio, Malmo, Olympiacos, Rapid Wien, Rennes, Slavia Praha, Shakhtar, Plzen, Zürich.
We’ve played some of them before, but some we haven’t. The stats show that our win record against the teams we’ve never played is 0% so as Unai Emery’s favourite singer Yazz once said, the only way is up.
Olympiacos beat Ivan Gazidis’ AC Milan 3-1 last night to send the Italians crashing out of the competition, and there are a couple of tricky trips in there – particularly the Turkish sides as well as Lazio.
The draw takes place in Nyon on Monday afternoon after an interminable UEFA ceremony during which we’ll all wish we were dead.
Arseblog News has no inside info at all, but we’re putting a crafty fiver on Shaktar because we’ve got Ukraine in the membrane this season.
Celtic would be fun
Agree. Least amount of travel, and one of the sh$&@iest and most despised opponents left.
?
Why are Celtic despised? You don’t remember all the Arsenal/Celtic 50:50 hats in the Charlie Nicholas days?
And have to come up against Deluded Brendan?
https://twitter.com/DeludedBrendan/status/1069275547203788802
Fingers crossed it’s Slavia Prague as I live here! Would be amazing for away supporters as well – flights to/from UK are cheap and the city is too beautiful to miss.
Would be OK for me, I’m from Vienna. Rapid would be great, but Prague or Pilsen would be nice too. Nothing tastes Mike Czech beer.
Also living in Vienna and hope it’s gonna be Rapid but Praha would also be perfectly fine because train is kinda cheap and fast and i love prague. Tend to avoid Lazio now, everybody else shouldn’t be a big problem but i remember östersund tho.
If we draw Rapid, i would recommend coming to Vienna. Great nightlife, good beer(not as good as the czech tbh), grumpy people, neat city, home of falco and freud and plenty of sightseeing stuff. Not a fan of rapid at all but expect a great atmosphere.
Yes please. I’m starting to feel like there would be more Arsenal than Rapid supporters in the stadium 🙂
Insane, got no brain
Celtic is the optimal choice. They’re local, they’re fun and most importantly they are absolutely shit.
As an Irish catholic I have a soft spot for Celtic but Brendan Rogers is such a cunt
I think that Krsnodar will be trickier travel-wise than Donetsk. Donetsk can be potentially more dangerously though.
Shakhtar play their home games at Kharkiv at the moment. Donetsk is controlled by insurgents
Lazio would make me the most nervous out of those teams. They’re going pretty well in the league and have some very dangerous players.
And a dangerous place for the fans. I don’t want Lazio for that reason, I would much prefer all our supporters coming home without holes in them!
True enough. Their ultras are some of the most rabid anti-Semitic in world football. Let’s hope if we do make that trip we can leave their ignoramus ultras weeping into their beers!
I have just been told by my physic cat that we will get Zürich!!
Literally made me laugh out loud
physic? (i.e. he/she likes hard science) or psychic? (he/she goes for the softer sciences) 😉
I have re-checked the statistics and found that we have never lost to a team we have not played. So, pretty confident either way.
Only Chelshit represent a firm enough threat.
Everythingelse, we are our own worse enemy.
No Spurts or Liverpuddle…hopefully they get knocked out in the knock out rounds of the CL which will be also perfect for us.:D
I hope we can draw Leverkusen at some point!
You know we are going to somehow get Bayern again.
In football everything is possible.
Bring them on. .
We think only about the next match. At the moment we want our player to play with our idea and big personality as we are improving step by step.
Ukraine in the brain!
Club Brugge would be nice and local also Rennes.
5 bucks says we draw Olympiacos.
Rennes would be good; Cech’s former club, short journey, and they’re rubbish.
I hope we get Krasnodar. Theyre the best team to watch right now in the Russian league. Theyve got a world class new stadium and the best thing about them is that they play just like Arsenal free flowing attacking football. Pretty young squad too. Itll be exciting.
I’m in Glasgow. So Celtic will do nicely. I’m still hearing about that Eduardo penalty ?