Today at 11 am UK time (12 noon CET) Arsenal fans will finally find out who the Gunners will be facing in the first knockout round of the Champions League. Naturally (as we finished second in our group as usual) we are nearly certain to face one of the European heavyweights, and who would be surprised if we drew Bayern Munich or Barcelona as usual!
So here are our possible opponents:
Barcelona
Real Madrid
Bayern Munich
Atletico Madrid
Porto
Monaco
So we have four possible BRILLIANT opponents and two very difficult ones, so we have realistically a 1 in 3 possibility of having a chance to progress to the next round. BUT it is also possible (if unlikely) that we will get all our injured players back to fitness, as well as buying a top class DM and centre-back in the January window. That is a bit optimistic (to say the least) so let us just choose amongst ourselves which team we would PREFER to face in the next round. Surely it’s got to be Porto or Monaco?
Arsenal failed to top the Group thanks to that ridiculous draw against Anderlecht when we were 3-0 up, so to put things in perspective I am going to list the teams we COULD have faced if we had won the Group:
Bayer Leverkusen
Juventus
Basle
Shakhtar Donetsk
PSG
I’m sure all Arsenal fans would be a lot happier today if we were in the pot to face one of those teams, wouldn’t we?